Decay of Innocence
by Penna.Pretereo
Summary: The wasteland erodes everything it touches. A naive Doctor-turned-courier was no match for it's trials even before someone shot her in the face and left her for dead. Faced with death and an unforgiving desert, good intentions will only get you so far.
1. Chapter 1

_This isn't the first bit of fanfiction I have ever written, but it is the first I have ever shared publicly. As such, any comments are appreciated. Just be gentle with me. I bruise easily._

_Also. I do not own Fallout. At least not in an intellectual property sort of way. So there._

Something in her mouth tasted _awful_. Like sweat and blood and desperation.

Things were blurry; slow. A rhythm sang steadily and paced, timing itself with the beating of her heart and the blood pounding in her ears which she was, quite suddenly, acutely aware of. The sound continued deeply, pulsing up through her knees with deep strokes, the timing perfect; steady and unbroken even as her eyelids slowly raised. Two regions of black expanded out to the right and to the left, with a brilliant pillar of light cutting through the middle. _A stairway_, her bleary mind mumbled to itself, fumbling incomprehensibly as it tried in vain to sort the plethora of information it was suddenly receiving. The horizon shimmered with the stairway, slicing deftly through the black expanse that pressed on all sides, and colorful words like 'drowning' and 'suffocating' came to her muddled mind to describe the situation she found herself in.

A moment of desperate sorting later she realized those words weren't as applicable as she had originally perceived them to be. At least, not _literally_ applicable. She found she could breathe, even if every breath tickled her nose with specs of dirt and the smell of decay, and each breath brought new pain to her dry lips and the cracked corners of her mouth. The world was black and stank of dying flowers and dirt, and that single shaft of light in the distance could offer no hope to cut through the smell as it had the darkness. As she brought her unfocused stare upwards she realized it was less of a shaft and more of a ... A _blob,_ really. A mass of softly glowing white like the moon had decided to take a little vacation and bury itself in the unforgiving sands of the Mojave.

Things were coming together much too slowly. Somewhere beyond the ringing in her ears she could hear voices; the deep baritones of men speaking insidiously between themselves, but the words were coming to her much as her sight was - out of focus and too far away. And the sound - the rhythm, the deep, steady strokes - was becoming sharper, more recognizable. Something stabbing into the Earth and dragging back at a measured pace, ticking at memories in the back of her mind. Her thoughts held a word to her and she timidly fitted it to the situation, though it came on slow as all else was; shovel. Dig. Someone was digging.

Though small, a triumph. She gathered herself, feeling her back ache in protest as she straightened, bringing her eyes to level with the men she could still hear speaking - but not yet understand. A figure, bright and glowing unlike the others that had gathered, was turning towards her - as best she could tell - and taking notice of her new found alertness. She called on her voice to address him but was greeted only with a pathetic mewl that muffled itself against the gag that held her mouth open.

He was speaking to her, but his words didn't make sense. She tried to force them to, but couldn't focus still. _Pain_ was suddenly a sensation she was much better acquainted with as her brain decided that dealing with _that_ was more important than understanding what Mr. Shiny was trying to tell her. Not that she could necessarily _blame_ her body - she ached everywhere. Her cracked lips, her pounding head, her stiff wrists, her sore knees. Nothing seemed to feel as it was supposed to, and with that quiet acceptance came, of course, the question as to _why_ nothing felt right.

And then something glinted maliciously in the moonlight and none of that mattered - and it got her attention. It got _all_ of her attention.

The silver barrel of the gun shone against the backdrop of New Vegas, the glittering gem on the horizon that had seemed so much closer before it became crisp and defined. She could discern the features of the man in front of her now - dark hair, dark eyes, dark intentions with that decidedly not-dark gun of his. He shone in detail where the others with him seemed to fall back into the darkness, light from the moon and from the city reflecting off the polished white of his coat. The gun flickered away and seemed darker for a moment as he adjusted it, moving the barrel from light of the city and -

_No._

She struggled against the ties on her hands, crying out against the gag as the gun swooped lower and leveled with her head. He was still speaking but she couldn't hear him again - couldn't hear _anything_ besides the pounding of blood in her ears and the rhythm of the shovel diving into the Earth. In a terrible moment all the pieces her mind couldn't place came crashing together, and she wished she could shake them apart so that they _didn't_ make the sense they made. Hot tears clouded her eyes and she cried out against the gag, begging, _pleading_, even if he couldn't understand her, even if she couldn't understand herself.

There was no reason - _there was _no_ reason - _to kill her. Who was she? No one! A waste of ammunition! If she could just explain, if she could just _reason_ with him, make him see, understand - she couldn't be the person he thought she was, couldn't be meaning to aim that fancy gun at her head, couldn't -

Twin shots rang out and somehow, she heard at least the first one. The second was a drowned out scream of indignities that her mind listed even as she pitched forward. Scrambled bits of memory and thought coalesced into badgering nonsense, flickering on and off as the last, tingling vestiges of sensation passed her fingertips and left, buzzing, from her face. Dirt kissed her cheeks and she lay motionless, her mind noting the warmth spreading down the back of her neck to be _blood_ and how knowing that didn't really matter anymore.

But all this was a matter of seconds because the black returned quickly. Two eaves of darkness pressed in, one from the right and one from the left, and through a single eye she saw the glowing, fading brilliance of a city she would never see.


	2. Chapter 2

"Courier work? Isn't that a little ..." The older man had sighed, scratching the back of his neck irritably. She could tell this wasn't a conversation that he wanted to have; she could tell the very prospect of little Hev crossing the wastes all by her lonesome was causing a severe _big brother_ itch that was apparently located in some unreachable portion of back between his shoulder blades. His hand dropped and he seemed to give up on the itch, finishing his sentence long seconds after he had begun it, each syllable seeming to be more difficult to release than the last, "Dangerous?"

She didn't respond right away, only shot him an incredulous glance, one that was given greater weight by the fact that she was currently changing a pus soaked bandage on his calf. While the infection wasn't life - or limb - threatening, it did serve as proof that he wasn't following her instructions on daily cleaning of the buckshot wound he had received last week. It also served as a valid excuse that Mr. Big Shot Caravan Guard wasn't about to lecture _her_ on how dangerous it was to tread the wasteland. The moment of silence she took to simply glance at him, however, afforded him a window to form and interject an addendum before she could elaborate on the simple stare.

"I just mean that - I know, I know you can take care of yourself. But this ain't NCR land. Not official yet, anyhow. I only mean that the Mojave is dangerous. All sorts of shit out there that ain't a trouble here. If you need the money I could just-"

"No." She finally, and firmly, spoke, pulling away another dirty piece of bandage and looking up to him from her crouching position, "I'm moving to the Mojave because that's where I'm needed. I'm only doing this delivery thing because the money is good and I'm heading to Vegas anyways." He didn't look satisfied, and as his mouth curled to form a new objection, she could only muse that for someone who was forcing such an effort to form mere syllables a moment before, whole sentences were coming quite easily to him now. She was sure to continue quickly before that theory gained weight."I'll be following Jess' caravan almost the whole way there. Soon as we cross out of NCR territories it will be a straight shot to the city. Besides that, it's safer than caravan work - I won't be drawing attention to myself."

Her brother still had that look in his eyes - that uneasy stare that, when they were younger, would have been a promise that whatever her plan was, he aimed to foil it. If they had been kids still, he would have ratted her out to their Father or followed her out just to ruin her fun. But they weren't kids anymore, and he knew that. He knew there as nothing he could do to stop her.

Hev reached out to a small side table, her hand blindly grasping for sterile gauze to wrap her brother's wound in. She didn't wish to break eye contact with him, but after a moment of fumbling for the cloth without success, she glanced away to assure her hand found purchase. Just as she suspected, however, as soon as she looked away, he voiced a new concern.

"Don't trust them Followers a bit neither. You know Caesar is-"

"-was-"

"- a Follower? Ain't no good gonna come from this, Hev, you mark my word."

Her dark eyes rolled skyward as she heard this argument _again_ - it seemed, in her family, that the Followers may as well all be the larval form of Legionaries. Not that her family had been keeping up with NCR politics - not since her Father's death - but there was a definitive attitude amongst them that the Legion were the _bad guys_ and Caesar was _bad guy supreme_. From the stories she had heard, Hev had to agree with this notion. It didn't change the fact that the Followers had offered her work and additional medical training in a clinic just outside of Vegas proper. It was the sort of work she knew her parent's would have wanted her doing, and the only disruptive factor in the equation was the little fact that she was very nearly _flat broke_ and would have no money at all by the time she had reached Vegas. And seeing as she had these strange urges to eat things that didn't possess antennae and drink clean water and sleep in a safe place away from all the Wasteland's various nutjobs, well, being flat broke just would not do. Mostly broke, however, she may be able to work with.

"I'll be able to do a lot more good out there than I do here." She leaned back and waved a hand towards the door, "Unless you _really_ think helping a Brahmin give birth is personally rewarding to a physician in _any_ way."

"Brahmin are an important -"

"No, no, no, don't even." She couldn't see it, but her eyes had gained a rather annoyed, if somewhat dangerous, glint just behind her thick framed glasses, and this alone quieted his assurance. There was truly only so many things a young doctor could _learn_ from treating Brahmin, and it was just enough that she could start calling herself a goddamn _veterinarian_. Not that half the people of the wastes knew what that was anymore, but the point was she had been trained for more than just diagnosing who had Hoof Rot and who was pregnant.

"Look - everything is going to be fine. I'm going where I'm needed, and that's that." She smiled sweetly, tightening the gauze despite the hiss of pain he gave. Served him right; if he had been more thorough with changing the bandages, the damn thing wouldn't have gotten infected. Her small hands moved deftly to pin her work in place, her voice and smile continuing on sunnily - her idiotic optimism giving her brother just one more thing to groan about, "Besides, come on, " She tilted her head up with that stupid, happy grin of hers, "Who could shoot this face?"

...

It was a shapeless thing, she was staring at, whatever it was.

It lay crumpled with the bulk of it's mass spread out on it's back, connected to something frail and like colored running down and out of her vision. Spindly arches reached up crooked and weak looking, like a roaches legs reaching gnarled to the sky while it lays dying. Four thinner and one thicker and shorter bent at regular intervals and pointed upwards for the most part, though the way they were angled made her wonder if they had somehow gotten lost on the perilous endeavor of pointing. A thin metal band rested on the third one down, a simpering and weak looking digit if she had ever seen one, and the silver of it seemed to physically nudge her in the direction of awareness. She felt this nudge poke it's way through her consciousness, and it followed through her shoulder and down her arm and she watched the shapeless digits twitch powerlessly once in unison.

She was looking at her hand. And she had drooled on her pillow.

Her eyes moved past her hand, which, with the mystery about it abolished, didn't seem quite so fascinating anymore. She imagined it was best to move on quickly and quietly - lest the hand become aware of it's previous stardom and set it's aims to retake the spotlight. Instead her sight moved quickly, flicking across alien surroundings which were recognized with far greater ease to her than even her own hand had been. Not that she had been in this room before, no, but there were only so many ways to decorate a wasteland clinic without a friendly sign that read 'I Will Try Very Hard Not To Kill You'. The Wasteland Doctor's oath. And she imagined a smiley face at the end.

She could see an aged oxygen tank, a short table with wheels and medical equipment atop it, a gurney with scalpels and forceps and other things that didn't like to stay as clean and sterile as they were supposed to, and a bucket overflowing with bloody bandages and a ruined set of clothes. the blue of overalls peeked out over the edge of the basket, faded and beaten by the sand and sun of the wastes. An orange checkered shirt with the sleeves cut off, that, though she couldn't see them, knew had her initials stitched into the collar from her Mother's hand. _Her_ clothes lay in that heap, bloody, filthy and ruined, and there were several minutes where she couldn't recall _why_ some part of her mind found that so profoundly disturbing.

Oh, _pain_. She had certainly not missed that. But just as everything else was falling together with an alarming pace, pain had decided to make it's triumphant return and split lengthwise across her skull. She hissed in a breath, that shapeless hand slowly recollecting how to move and then doing so - sliding up to grasp at her forehead. She kicked over, rolling onto her back and closing her eyes. The dim room suddenly seemed brighter, and as a dark memory slithered unwelcome into her mind, it seemed a bit more frightening as well, bright or no.

_Shot_. In the _face._ Fingers scraping against a new divot in her forehead confirmed the memory with chilling certainty. The left side of her head, just to the right of her temple and just below her hairline. Puckered and ugly and whispering soft to her a nightmare she wanted desperately to believe was nothing but. There was some comfort in this clarity, however - by her logic, being shot in the head meant that she was certainly _dead_. She was not too modest to admit she was a gifted doctor - at least to brahmin, but that was beside the point - and, being the gifted doctor that she was, she was almost positive that she was alive. Maybe, given more time, she could perform a few tests to ascertain which of these statements were false, because one of them _had_ to be untrue, though judging by the amount of pain she was in, she was fairly certain it was the latter.

Who was to say the dead couldn't feel pain? She hadn't ever been dead before, how could she know?

Well one thing was certain - she needed to get to the bottom of this _am I dead_ thing right quick. She propped herself up on her elbows, testing how steady her head was before she dared to push herself up and forward. Her bare feet brushed at errant grains of sand on the stained concrete below the bed, the sensation sending a shiver up her spine and a twist into her stomach. Even taking things slow did little to help the dizzy spell that struck just as she lifted herself from the bed, her vision teetering between clarity and blur for a befuddling few seconds before it settled into definition and she realized she was not alone.

Though her vision couldn't be blamed entirely for that; it was dark and the man had only chosen then to speak. Which, after a moment's consideration, seemed to her a little creepy. He could have introduced himself while she was dumbly examining her hand, but instead waited until she was just getting her bearings together, like surprising her after the trauma she had already endured would usher along her recovery. Though, seeing as how she was still on the fence about whether or not she was alive, she decided she could forgive him for this transgression.

"Woah, easy-" His voice was soft and grandfather-like, gentle and steady, and she could tell he was doing his best to reassure her, "Don't try to get up so fast, now. You need to rest. Hell of a thing you been through," She felt a hand on her shoulder, and she looked, blinking, up to his aged face. Weathered and tan, creased from the hardship of living - definitely a man of the wastes. So that was one point towards still being alive, unless the Great War nuked Heaven too. And that was just too depressing a thought to entertain.

"You remember anything? Your name? Birthday? Where you from?"

"I'm dead, not retarded." She felt her face twitch and she blinked, as the voice she thought she had lost somewhere out in the darkness came back to her with startling clarity. The old man blanched, and then those well worn creases folded back into a grin. Her own mouth worked soundlessly for a few moments as she tried to grasp why she was _such_ an asshole - and even came up with a rather convincing theory of the 'asshole switch' being located in the frontal lobe and chemically activated by the presence of _lead_ - but he saved her from the lengthy explanation _that_ would have been with a soft chuckle.

"Nah, you ain't dead, girl. 'Gainst all odds it seems." He nodded to himself, then leaned back into the chair next to her bed, his eyes moving over her face, appraising his work, "But I had to root around a bit in there, so if you would, can you tell me how your memory is?"

"Monroe." She spoke again, maybe a little too quickly, and again her voice sounded much stronger and steadier than she felt inside, even if her name wasn't something she often cared to share. Her first name had always been a point of vexation for her, and so she opted instead for her surname, "I mean, my name ... It's Dr. Monroe. August tenth, twenty-two fifty-eight. I'm ..." Her word caught on the last syllable, dragging out as her hand returned to the pain in her head. Her eyes screwed shut as she tried to shoo the headache from her skull through sheer force of will, and when that plan fielded no results, she popped one eye open to scan the room for drugs. Preferably _strong_ ones.

"A Doctor, is it then? 'Magine that." He seemed to already be a single step ahead of her plight, as he was reaching forward with a syringe topped with something that was clear and absolutely _divine_ because it only took a few moments to swill around in her veins and march up to that headache and give it a mean talking-to.

"Yes, and it's my medical opinion that I'm _dead_, sir, so ... thank you for your concern but you can go and _leave _the needle-"

A soft sound rose up out of his throat that she imagined was a chortle, but couldn't quite tell because immediately following it he began to mutter, "Sure do have a lot of jokes fer a gal just got shot in the head ..."

Hearing it said had a strange effect on her; like it suddenly all became so irrevocably _real_ that her breath caught in her throat. The morphine was working it's will on her still healing wounds, and as the pain faded the pounding of her heart became more noticeable, breaking into the forefront of her mind as his words ran over and over again, quickening the rhythm in her chest and stilling the intake of her breath. Her hand had begun quaking, dropping from it's position at her new scar to land numbly in her lap, eyes fixing and staring unendingly at the ground. _Shot in the head_. He had said it, he knew it had happened, and that made it _real_, that meant that that horrible nightmare burned into her waking mind had actually _occurred_. That there was a man out there with a suit of checkered white and a shining, silver gun that had barked forth a terrible ultimatum.

"Oh, my God ..." Her lips felt just as dried and cracked as they had then, crouching on that desolate little patch of earth waiting to fall into that shallow, unmarked grave, "Oh ... Oh my God ..." Now that she was sounding like a terribly _articulate_ Doctor as well as an asshole, she decided to cave into the urge she felt growing in the twisting emptiness where her stomach was and curl forward, feeling dizzy and sick and so horrifically _alive_ she wished her body wasn't so damned resilient to being _dead_. Something thick and heavy lurched up into her throat and she struggled to draw in a breath past it, and paired with the lurching of her stomach and the heaviness of her head she couldn't hold back the sick that boiled up and spilled out.

Luckily for what was left of her dignity the good Doctor was quick - sometime in the midst of her panic attack he had pulled forward the waste bin and she was able to puke onto her ruined overalls instead of her bare feet. Reflex summoned tears to her eyes as the burning liquid escaped her throat, splattering muted against the tattered remnants of her life as a Courier.

"Where ..." She gagged, feeling as though she may vomit again, but somehow held it back in the pursuit of understanding, "... What ..." A strangled cough fought it's way through her chest, and the tremble it sent up her neck shook the tears loose from her eyes to drip down into the bin, " ... _Who_ ... Who ..."

"All in good time, darlin'." His palm pressed into her back, rubbing along her spine as if that was a practiced medical procedure to use in response to a trauma victim. "All in good time."


	3. Chapter 3

Sunny Smiles felt her smile twitch.

"Hey! I almost hit that one!"

Apparently, back in NCR lands, 'almost' meant 'entirely fucking missed' because she hadn't seen _anyone_ - including children and the elderly - who was as bad a shot as this girl was. The mystery wasn't _that_ she had been shot in the head and left for dead, but that she had made it as far as she had _before _it happened. Sunny offered her a smile and a nod of encouragement, but as soon as the young Doctor turned back to face the bottles on the fence, she felt her eyebrows go up and her face screw together in disbelief. The rifle she had given the newcomer was small as a pea shooter and yet, somehow, every shot nearly blew the little woman backwards. To her credit, she was - slowly - learning to compensate for the kick of firing the rifle but she still couldn't shoot a _goddamn_ thing.

If it had been anyone else, Sunny probably would have been charging them for the ammunition. But Sunny Smiles was no asshole. She could never turn her back on some poor gal that stumbled in off the desert with nothing in her pocket and a bullet scar on her forehead. It helped that the girl had about as ridiculous a first name as Sunny had a full name - and had requested to be referred to by her last name and title. Her urge to help was only encouraged when she heard the girl planned on leaving town and tracking down the men who had shot her - which, upon seeing the girl's lack of skill with a rifle, was equivalent to _suicide_ in Sunny's eyes. Poor thing was going to end up as some strung out junkie on the strip or a dried up corpse on the Mojave.

A bullet ricocheted off the wall behind her target and knocked back, hitting the wood underneath a bottle. The tremor it sent through the wood rattled the glass and caused it to topple over at a lazy pace - it didn't even shatter as it hit the ground.

"That ... Um, that counts, right? I mean, like, I get half points maybe?" Her eyebrows had drawn up towards the scar as she looked to Sunny for some sort of encouragement. Which, in the spirit of not being an asshole, she could offer, even if it was entirely faked. "Uh, sure, course. You um. You gettin' the hang of it, huh?"

The pale girl's face spread into a wide grin and she turned back to fire off another shot - which, of course, missed. Though this time it not _just_ missed - she was pretty sure it fired off into the distance _no where near_ the bottles or the bar behind them, and so Sunny took long strides forward to place a gentle hand on the stock of the gun. She wasn't an asshole, but she couldn't allow this to continue. Someone was going to get _hurt_.

"Hey, uh, look. Why don't we take a break, yeah? Your arm must be killin' ya, what with never having fired a rifle before." Monroe's face seemed to fall slightly. Sunny felt a pang of guilt, but she didn't see any alternative; the good Doctor would need to practice on her own time, preferably somewhere far from Sunny Smiles, her dog, and anyone else that might be hurt by the girl's incompetence. "Well, I mean, I gotta go down to the spring and chase off critters, so you should probably just head somewhere _safe_ and try not to _shoot_ nothin'."

Monroe's face lit up almost immediately, as if a simply _stupendous_ idea had popped into that blond little head of hers, and she was nodding to Sunny even before she started speaking. "Oh, hey, I could help you!" The shorter girl lifted the rifle in a gesture, her grin spreading so wide that Sunny reckoned it would pop off and wander away if it got any bigger, "It would be good practice, you know, moving targets and all."

_You couldn't hit the targets that were _standing still_, _were the words that Sunny didn't speak because, as she had to forcefully keep reminding herself, she was _not_ an asshole. She managed a polite, if somewhat exasperated, smile, patting he girl's rifle with a shake of her head in the negative, "Ah, no, no, things might get a bit prickly out there. Best you stay here. Or, hey, you need somethin' to do - head on up to the schoolhouse. There's a safe in there that-"

"Oh, I already opened that."

"- Old Pete hasn't been - What?" Sunny blinked, her hand dropping off the gun as she fixed the Doctor with a stare. Up until then, she had thought the title 'Doctor' had been some cruel sarcasm that people had fixed her with back in the NCR. Strictly speaking, Sunny had assumed the girl was an idiot - a pretty, well meaning idiot - but an idiot nonetheless. To say she had already picked the safe open either made her some kind of air headed savant or a liar.

At her silence, the Doctor took her cue, smiling as she explained nonchalantly, "Oh, well, I mean I didn't pick the lock or anything. But the terminal next to the computer was using the old, pre-war UOS _without_ the updated security protocols that RobCo issued in 2076 - I mean, it was pretty obvious since it lacked the new standardized user interface that would have also upgraded it's memory system." She paused, seeming to have another thought randomly, "Though most people back then were more focused on security measures and not data storage, what with the looming apocalypse and all that." Fixing her eyes back to Sunny, she blinked, as if remembering she was _speaking_ to someone other than herself, "Er, but anyways, well, everyone knows that makes resetting the security clearance via the BIOS command line _child's play._"

Sunny blinked.

"You know what, maybe you should tag along for this. Sounds like you could use some fresh air."

Monroe was smiling again - or maybe still, considering Sunny had mostly blacked out the last few seconds of conversation - and began forward, fumbling with reloading her gun the way Sunny had taught her. "So you some kind of egghead scientist then?" Sunny tried not to laugh as the ridiculousness of the question seemed obvious; that a girl who struggled with something as simple as _reloading_ could have just spouted any of the nonsense she had just heard was _staggering_.

"My head isn't remotely egg shaped." She sounded honest-to-goodness confused by the question, but continued speaking nevertheless, "I'm a veterinarian."

"A what now?"

Monroe smiled over to Sunny, a glint of something like self doubt in her eyes, something Sunny hadn't yet seen in the Doctor girl from the NCR. After mulling a moment to herself, she spoke again, just as cheery as before, "It means I work with animals. You know. Medically." She gestured down to Cheyenne with hands finally free from the awkward task of reloading, "Like I could tell you all the vital organs in your dog."

"Oh." Sunny considered this a moment, "Well then, hell, you might just be worth something out here. You can tell what's inside a gecko, you could probably kill them a sight easier than I could." _As long as they are no further than arm's length and standing still. Or asleep.  
_

Not an asshole.

"Oh, geckos?" Monroe was smiling again, her face bright with excitement, "A fascinating species. I've only read about pre-war ones, but did you know they don't have eyelids? They - Oh, you don't mind if I talk, do you?"

Sunny trained her expression back into neutrality. She had been slipping into a look of weary exasperation. Forcing a smile - which was harder than she imagined it would be - she shook her head. "No, course not, it's a bit of a walk and ... Geckos are ... Interesting."

The girl didn't pick up on the subtle note of disinterest in her voice. No, she began _speaking_ again, with a zeal and naivety that may have been charming - if it weren't so damned annoying.

For the second time that day, Sunny felt her smile twitch.

...

There was a moment, as a lit stick of dynamite whizzed audibly past her head and the crackling fuse reached it's end in a deafening clap somewhere behind her, that Hev paused to consider just how she got herself into these situations. Well, she couldn't quite _pause_ at that moment because she was aiming her handgun at a charging man's head, but as her gun quipped twin quick pops she was making a definite mental note to sit down in the near future and really _brainstorm_ on ways to not make people want to kill her. She was a pretty pleasant, good-natured person - at least she and all the brahmin had always thought so - and so she was beginning to really wonder why the rest of the world seemed so intent on blowing her goddamn brains out.

The first attempt barely grazed the dark skinned convicts face and shot off into the wasteland harmlessly, the second careening even further off the mark and not hitting him at all. Both of his ash smeared arms raised a bloodied baseball bat above his head, his long strides bringing him into range of her within mere seconds. Hev's heart was pounding violently in her chest but somehow she managed to lift the nine millimeter up one more time, clasping it between both hands and praying to _God_ that she hadn't miscounted and she still had one bullet left in the clip. The little black pistol popped off another flash of light and fire and the shot this time met it's mark mere moments before that bat would have slammed down and left her scrounging the sand for her teeth. The bullet entered just above his upper lip, tearing a messy hole with a muted thud, causing his head to rear back and his body to fall in a slump at her feet.

Hev was curious as to the path of logic one had to travel in order to charge head on at a gun toting adversary when one's only tool of offense was outdated sports equipment. She chalked it up to another mystery of the wasteland and tore her gaze away, eyes snapping back and forth to the still raging fight.

Another two convicts were charging at Sunny and Pete, both of whom were standing unharmed behind the barricade. Sunny was laying down decent enough fire to slow them, and Pete was readying another stick of dynamite that would put them out of commission. She spied Ringo down by the water tower in front of the bar - and had a dumbfounded moment where she couldn't _imagine_ what the hell he was thinking to have left the barricade - pinging away at the gangers with a pistol so small it looked like it might fit in her _pocket_. Bitter words rose up like bile in her throat and she was about to sling every curse she _knew_ at him even before informing him that cover was _that_ way and certain death was the _other_ way, but all that was choked off as she saw another two convicts departing the cover of a house and heading towards the barricade.

What struck her at first was that they were walking. Hev knew precisely dick about tactics or warfare, but she was fairly decent with logical deductions. Every other ganger that had decided to attack the town had been charging in like a loon with crazy eyes and bared teeth. These two, however, were walking, almost calmly, and the difference in pace was well enough to cause her to bite off her warning to Ringo and study them a bit more closely - a task that was made much harder by the fact she still hadn't found a pair of glasses to replace those she had lost in the grave.

What she _could_ make out didn't offer any calm to her racing heartbeat. Their arms were up and long metal was reaching out spindly fingers, straight and stained gray, absorbing the sunlight without the faintest glint to them. They were walking because they were _aiming_ and they were aiming because they had very large rifles pointed at the barricade. They weren't exactly high grade military snipers, but just one well placed shot with those rifles would spell a very messy end for Sunny or Pete.

She was to the right of the barricade at a flanking position, as such she had escaped their notice; their focus was on the girl with the gun and the old man with the explosives. It had been Sunny's idea - well, actually, her original idea had been that Hev stay in the general store and not poke her head out until the shooting stopped - but Hev wasn't one to persuade everyone else in town to fight and then go hide under a bed somewhere. And now, seeing this, it was a very _good_ thing she had decided not to follow those orders.

She might have been a horrible shot but she was a _damn_ sight smarter than anyone else out here and she was going to prove she wasn't useless. Her mind worked quickly in those few seconds of seeing the men with the rifles, and she dove down to the convict at her feet, rolling him over and gathering the sticks of dynamite he carried strapped across his chest. In the rush to aid her comrades she very nearly proved how _dumb_ she was and forgot to check him for a lighter. And thank Christ that he _had_ one or else her plan would have gone to utter shit before it even got off the ground. Unless throwing unlit dynamite and following up with some mean names would be sufficient to cease the assault.

Her boots dug into sun bleached sand as she took off at a full sprint towards the water tower, fumbling with the metal wheel of the lighter and hoping to God she didn't drop it. She heard a body hit the ground not five paces from her as Sunny found a soft spot in one of the ganger's chests, and she imagined the other was already at the barricade - if he hadn't turned towards her to pursue a new target. There was a flash and a spark, then the crackle of the fuse igniting, and Hev ground her feet to a sudden stop just in front of the wooden fence encircling the water tower. She reared her arm back even as sparks popped off the lit fuse, taking a moment to mentally measure the trajectory and force needed for the distance she had to clear, then whipped her arm foward, releasing the stick and letting it sail out towards the two men and the snapping, thundering maws of their rifles.

The second ganger had, indeed, turned back for her, but Hev didn't see him coming. She stared intently at the red stick that bounced and rolled and landed just where she had wanted it at the feet of the men. A quiet moment stilled the chaos around her as her heart rose in elation and victory at the unspoken, subconscious pride one feels when they do something _right_ for a change. Simultaneously she felt the conflicting emotions of serene calm and frenetic rush at finding she was good at something _other_ than using big words and bottle feeding calves. Even if that something was blowing people up, it was still _something_ dammit and she was going to cling to it. This moment passed expeditiously, unfortunately, with a bang and a shudder as the fuse met the blasting cap and the stick blew, tossing a cloud of sand into the air and blowing the gangers into little powder pieces.

Well, more like large powder chunks, but the results left her just as satisfied.

She was just turning back to the barricade when her old buddy _pain_ decided to pop in for a little reminder of just how much she hadn't missed him and something metal and hard stabbed upwards into her stomach and knocked the air clear out of her chest. Her mouth puffed at the air like a dying fish for a desperate few moments as she tried to steady her knees and her swimming head, and the fist wrapped in metal drew back. It seemed her attacker was the only thing that had been providing stable balance to her body - ironic as he was the one that had ruined her own - and so she fell gracelessly to her knees, unable to see the man draw back the brass knuckles to strike her again.

A pop and a bloody mist stopped him from ever finishing that action, or any other for that matter, and he slumped to the sand without so much as a curse. Which made sense a moment later as she noted he was missing most of his forehead and she had bits of skull in her hair.

Slowly winning the fight to breathe, she heard the gunshots cease. She couldn't concentrate enough to count out how many had gone down, but she had to assume either the fighting was over or Sunny had become an impromptu pacifist. Somewhere beyond her gasping she heard a decidedly relieved, and immeasurably astounded, female voice.

"Holy shit. She actually _killed_ somethin'."

Hev's eyebrows pressed together and she looked up, chest wracked with pain and still struggling to breathe in defense of _their_ damn town. She was torn between the pride she felt for Sunny having taken notice and the annoyance she felt at the marked _surprise_ in her tone. After all the help she had been at the watering hole - she had totally given up her gun when Sunny had needed to reload, and _then_ reloaded the empty rifle and switched back - she was hoping she ranked a little bit higher than bland surprise.

Though she had _totally _killed the hell out of _two_ somethings and Sunny had _totally_ seen her do it.

Ringo was alive - and by her measure that made him luckier than _her_ - and limping towards the barricade with a big grin on his face. Hev had finally decided that the view from her knees wasn't particularly appealing and was working on amending her position when a hand grasped her arm and pulled her to her feet. Sunny was greeting her with a bit of a lopsided grin herself, some expression that strode the line halfway between astonishment and bewilderment playing across her features before she spoke.

"You still wantin' to see that grave site of yours? Cause I suddenly gained a bit of extra free time today, what with not having to chase Cobb out of town." Hev was still struggling to gather her bearings, finding her head swimming and her chest pounding from the struggle to breathe. She reached up to adjust her glasses on instinct before remembering her glasses were no longer there. Sighing as her hand dropped, she nodded to Sunny, taking only another few seconds to find the breath to speak.

Then realized she had no idea what even to _say_.

Hev nodded slowly, dumbly closing her mouth and reaching up to wipe at the blood that had spattered in an ugly pattern across the crown of her head. She barely saw the towel Sunny tossed her in time to catch it, and the fabric felt strange to her still buzzing fingers. She holstered the pistol at her hip, her hands tingling from the use of it, and began slow steps to follow Sunny's more certain ones. They moved north as the sun slipped down beneath the horizon to the west - towards her home.

The sunlight threw their shadows out towards the east, long dark figures unsettling in their inhuman slenderness. They looked like a pair of fingers pointing her out, pointing towards the Colorado and other lands unknown, towards an unforgiving expanse of desert that it seemed inevitable, now, that she must traverse.

Heavenly pulled the towel away, and while it hadn't been clean when she received it, the amount of blood on it now was unnerving. She found her eyes moving to Sunny's back, wondering now how anyone could stand living out here - by _choice_ - and how anyone out here wouldn't _want_ to be part of the Republic. She felt how she must have looked - like she stood out, like she was from a different time than these wastelanders, an alien creeping in their midst. She felt like Modoc and her parent's little ranch outside of it was from a different world, a more peaceful world, and she had somehow tripped and fallen into this tumultuous, violent one.

In her heart she felt a twinge of regret and a dull ache of longing for familiarity, her stomach coiled up around the emotion and she felt the sting of tears in her eyes. She wasn't _good_ at this and it showed. The adrenaline rush of the battle was slowly draining from her veins and leaving her with howling, empty places that doubt and apprehension rushed in to fill because bland optimism or petty ignorance couldn't do the job. She was talking large and offering strangers help against men with guns and explosives, and she knew, even if they hadn't guessed, that she _was_ all talk and she was absolutely terrible at all this. She had killed two men and the weight of _that_ hadn't even yet struck her - she couldn't let it. She took all those thoughts and decidedly sealed them away, pushing them to one corner of her mind and stubbornly refusing to ever _look_ in their direction.

Only one slipped by; caught in the corner of her eye as she resolutely stared in the opposite direction.

She could have _died_.

_Well then._ She considered bitterly, wiping the tears away with the ball of her palm and ordering her heart to calm itself, _I'm two-for-two. What else you got, Mojave?_

...

It was a rather perturbing sight, the scene of her death.

Though perhaps she was a pinch biased in judgment; Sunny didn't look like she was bothered much. The girl was crouching next to the third bloatfly body they had killed, having already disfigured the first and second, taking a knife and stabbing it in between their hairy, unmoving legs, She cut deep and then ripped the legs in opposite directions, opening up what Hev knew to be it's thorax, and working to cut away the soft sacks of meat within. Hev really, _really_ hoped that meat was for Cheyenne because if not there was no way in _hell_ she was ever eating in Goodsprings again.

Maybe Hev had been a tad spoiled in her upbringing, but she couldn't look at a disgusting, chittering mutated fly that had just tried to lay it's _eggs_ in their _stomachs_ and think it's whats for dinner. The very thought of it made her a little queasy, though it was a welcome distraction to the veritable gamut her thoughts had been running since they arrived at the site that would have - should have - been her grave.

Her eyes finally tore from Sunny's grim task, and moved back out to the north, towards the glittering promise on the horizon that she had viewed just before the man in the coat shut off all the lights with a single flash and a terrible gesture. New Vegas truly did shine brighter than anything else in the wastes, and the darkness that surrounded it was made all the more encroaching by it's brilliance alone. It seemed so very _close_ - so bright and shining and _right there_ - that she very nearly began walking along the road, towards the north and the city and undoubtedly the man who had thought it necessary to end her life.

That point was still in contention in her mind. Had he really thought it necessary to _kill_ her for that stupid chip? He could have just had it - taken it and left her unconscious. His men had come upon her when she had stopped for a rest along the road, hit her in the back of the head with the same shovel that they aimed to bury her with. The chip had been pretty, sure - pretty and detailed and weighed more than it seemed it should - but it had still just been an _object_. He hadn't even known her, not a thing about her, and he felt that a human life was less important than an _object_? The more the questions ran through Hev's mind the worse she felt about the whole of the situation.

He could have just _had_ it. Taken it and walked away. Instead that pretty gun had flashed and struck and ended all pretenses of safety she had ever had.

Dying seemed to be an awfully traumatic thing.

"I just don't get it." Hev's eyes were running over the shallow grave that the weird cowboy robot had dragged her out of, as if searching a reason within it's confines, "Why kill me over a package?"

She heard Sunny let out a soft laugh, her leather pants creaking as she pushed herself to her feet, "Most need less reason than that, out here." She muttered softly, a grim and tenuous thing, and Hev could feel her guide looking at her, but couldn't bring herself to look back. That seemed like a horrible way of viewing the world and Hev wanted nothing to do with it; she had of course heard of the anarchy of the unclaimed territories, but she couldn't imagine a world where men like Mr. Checkered Coat could walk around with their shiny hand cannons and _do_ whatever the hell they wanted to do.

No, there would be justice out here, even if it was incremental. Even if it had to be sourced at her own hand.

Something dark was poking up from the sand, something black and thin that the darkness left in the wake of the setting sun had almost hidden from her. Hev felt and eyebrow quirk and knelt, pulling at the thin plastic arm of her glasses. The loose sand parted to allow them to rise and Hev felt a rush of relief as the lenses weren't cracked or missing. As she pulled them up and out of the shadow of the grave, the light of the sunset beamed through a lens and she nearly dropped them, her heart skipping painfully.

The lenses were stained red. Red with her _blood_. She was pulling her possessions from the _ground_ and they were covered in her _blood_ and she wasn't really sure if she could _ever_ be okay with that. She felt a lump rise up in her throat and a sickness sink down into her stomach - not for the first time that day. Her hand was shaking as she held the glasses, staring at the ugly smear of red across them, her confusion and panic coming summarily to a head. The final scattered remnants of denial - of _hope_ - fled from her mind, burnt to ashes on a pyre of realization.

"Monroe? Somethin' wrong?" Sunny's voice was closer now, behind and above her. Hev rose to her feet, still holding the glasses by one arm at a distance, as though they were an incongruous, alien thing.

"Just getting used to being dead, that's all." Hev's voice was flat and distance, unrecognizable to her in a way that made her flinch.

Sunny, in opposition, sounded optimistic and unfazed, "Well, I can get those clean for you. Found a little recipe made with Abraxo that'll get blood out of anything. Just ..." She reached forward and plucked them from Hev's hand as the light hair girl was still staring, entranced, towards Vegas. Heavenly moved right forward without noting the glasses at all, as if they weren't hers at all and couldn't possibly _be_ hers because accepting them was accepting all the events that had led her to here. As if they were the final shred of undeniable proof that bound her to this journey northward.

"So I follow this road, north? Then I'm ... Then I'll be there."

"Normally you could," Sunny was reaching into the small shoulder pack she carried her extra ammunition, rooting around for something blindly, "But we got word a few weeks back that a pack of deathclaws made their nest on the quarry. Been cutting off travel along I-15. You ain't gonna want to head that way - best you head south to Primm and follow the road around through Nipton and Novac."

Nonchalantly, Sunny began wiping at the lenses with a cloth dabbed in the mixture from her pack. She was certain she had heard of these deathclaws - things that would nest sometimes too near a settlement and the army would send a unit to clear them out. Hev blinked, wondering for an embarrassed moment if Sunny was making fun of her ... _less_ that perfect shooting ability. . It didn't seem in Sunny's character to make fun of anyone though, and so Hev felt the need to ask, "What happens if I run into a deathclaw?"

"You piss your pants and _die_, that's what." Sunny smiled to her, shaking her head, "Don't take the chance. May seem like a long way around, but it's a lot nicer than gettin' your legs tore off and ate." She said that sentence a bit too cheerily for the subject matter it dealt with. Her glasses were held forth to her and she took them gratefully, sliding them back into place and brushing errant strands of her hair away from her forehead.

Her fingers brushed the scar, and she honestly couldn't recall if that were an accident or some sort of confirmation that it was there. Heavenly looked at Vegas for the first time with clear vision, and couldn't help but think that it looked so empty; so sterile and uncaring. And so close. It seemed ridiculous that she would have turn back and traverse the breadth of the Mojave just to reach the city that was sitting directly in front of her. Despite that, Hev nodded, feeling her heartbeat picking up.

"Just point me in the right direction." And that sounded much more courageous and confident and _certain_ a thing than the feelings that sank still inside the depths of her stomach. Heavy and shaking and terrified of taking a single _step_ out of the relative safety of Goodsprings. She could only hope that she was mistaken - that Goodsprings was a town that fell victim to the sort of violence she had witnessed today, and that the other places in the Wasteland would be saner and calmer.

She tried to impress a feeling upon herself that things were going to get better. Mostly because they _had_ to. After the grave, she figured, things could only get better.

And that became her mantra, even as things steadily got _worse_.


	4. Chapter 4

She was beginning to believe the man that had tried to dissuade her from entering the town was _not_ - as she originally surmised - simply overreacting.

The little eyebot that hovered behind her whirred softly, as if in compliance to the fact. Heavenly tilted her head back, away from the window to glance at the bot, giving him a nod in agreement. She had found him on the desk of the building she had been hiding out in since her arrival late last night, and fixing him had given her an ample distraction so that she wasn't forced to think about the rather grim circumstances that surrounded her. She had taken to calling him ED, as, of the identifying marks on him, it was either that or Honor Student and ED was far easier to say and wasn't as likely to make others believe she was crazy.

She hadn't thought she would be able to fix him, not at first; he looked like he had been through much more than what his little frame could handle, and she herself wasn't particularly skilled with hardware issues in pre-war robots. But upon popping open his maintenance panel she discovered that he _wasn't_ pre-war at all; the electrical processors were all wired differently than the pre-war Eyebot prototypes she had read about, and some of his secondary systems were still aligned correctly to sustain mainframe activity. In addition, upon further examination, she found that the bot hadn't retained any substantial physical damage, and it's frame was heavier and thicker than any of the models she had read about - and the very few she had seen in scrap heaps back west. It had taken her a good deal of the night - and some trial and error on her part - but he had come back to life just in time for him to keep her awake with the random little beeps and buzzes he was fond of.

She couldn't be angry at him for those, though; for all she knew, she had miscalibrated something and it was her fault to begin with. Besides that it wasn't as if she could get much sleep anyways with convicts who wanted to kill her wandering the streets outside. She _had_ managed to lock the door and raid a stranger's fridge - most likely the proprietor of the outpost - and catch a few hours of restless sleep on a dirty mattress shoved against a wall towards the back of the store. Every pop outside or rumble of the building caused her eyes to snap open, frantic and panicked and _knowing_ that there were men who wanted to _kill_ her just a few feet outside.

So, sure. She was a big enough person to admit that _maybe_ that guard at the entrance of Primm had been correct about the situation. That _maybe_, instead of seeing the Mojave Outpost and getting foolishly optimistic and excited, she should have just turned around and headed back to Goodsprings. That maybe sneaking into the town by waiting for the sun to set and walking as silently as her little frame would allow wasn't as great of an idea as it originally seemed to be.

_It worked though_, some distant, smug part of her mind noted, decidedly _not_ noting that the reason she had actually _made_ it was more likely to be the fact that half of the Powder Gangers that were still awake were shit faced drunk, and less likely the fact that she was just that _cunning._ The frantic run from the bridge at the entrance of town to the Outpost was no less unnerving, however, and gave her the sort of twist in her stomach that made her want to forsake stealth altogether and bound like a lunatic to the nearest building she could seal herself in. She had made it unnoticed to the Outpost and had had about nine seconds of victorious elation before her eyes adjusted to the dim lights and she noticed a factor she had neglected to consider. For some reason she couldn't fathom, it hadn't even _occurred_ to her while hatching that ludicrous plan that there might not _be_ anyone here.

So how exactly was she supposed to find out more about that _stupid_ package if there wasn't _anyone_ in the _goddamn Outpost?_

No, this day was not turning out well for Doctor Heavenly Monroe. Not at all.

So now she sat on her knees, staring out a crack in the wood of a boarded up window, watching the patrols of Powder Gangers circling the large building in the middle of town. She had counted six armed men so far, each with their own unspoken motivations that she couldn't possibly deduce. Their patrols held no semblance of method or organization; else she may have just made a run for it during a break in the pattern. But there _was_ no pattern - and she had been watching for close to two hours and had seen nothing that even _resembled_ one. They would wander through town aimlessly enough that it made her wonder if they had just become excessively _bored_ one day and decided to up and terrorize a town.

Maybe the chaos was the only form of order that they adhered to. Maybe their own unpredictability was the only card she had to play.

ED whirred behind her and clicked once, breaking the silence that she hadn't realized had become so unsettling. Hev released a long held sigh and tilted her head to the right, leaning her forehead against the wood to get a better view off towards the hotel with the roller coaster rising up behind it. The sun was just beginning to brighten the town, banishing the shadows and dim grays of early dawn, the Ganger's shadows shrinking with each passing hour. The heat in the building was becoming a palpable and heavy thing and made the black leather of the armor she had received in Goodsprings stick to her skin with the first moist hints of sweat. The creak of it made her remember Sunny and wish absently that she were there - then Hev would have a chance in hell of at _least_ killing _someone_ before she was riddled with holes and left bleeding in the street.

Well, thoughts like that certainly weren't helping steel the nervous clenching in her stomach or the fluttering of her heart.

"So I figure," She spoke over her shoulder to the eyebot, whom, at the very least seemed unfazed by her negativity, "That it's still early enough that, _maybe_, they might be tired and hung over. So I figure, _maybe_, I can make it back to the bridge if I hurry, right?" She glanced to the eyebot who continued to hover nonchalantly. Hev felt her lips press together in a thin line, "I just have to run. _Fast_. If I make it to the bridge the NCR guys will shoot any of them that are chasing me."

Of course, they didn't necessarily have to follow right on her heels to shoot at her back. But it was just that sort of negative thinking that was _not_ helping at all. Hev leaned back from the window, feeling her fingertips trace lightly against the scar on her forehead in the very spirit of negativity. She wasn't entirely certain that the little bot would follow her out, nor was she sure she wanted it to; she was pretty sure that constituted as some form of stealing, even if she _had_ gone to the trouble of fixing it.

It really wasn't that she considered it a _good_ plan. It was just a better plan than hiding in a hot building waiting to be violently found. She leaned back on her heels, pushing herself to her feet and giving her legs a moment to recover from the amount of time she had been crouching. Slowly remembering how to walk, Heavenly moved to the door and let her hand rest on the knob in a disquiet moment of stilled thoughts and fettered courage. The opposite hand rose to the bolt, tracing her fingers along the length of it with a single held breath finally releasing as she slid the bolt free and turned the knob clockwise, the door groaning softly and mumbling it's adherence.

Heavenly breathed deep the smell of fresh air, of _freedom_, and didn't wait for her eyes to adjust to the light to take off. She threw her right leg forward and took a leap bodily into a desperate run for the bridge.

...

"But, what I mean is ... I mean, you actually thought that would _work_?"

She was getting very, very tired of that question.

"I just mean - hell girl, you've gotta be outnumbered ten to one out there. You ain't nothin' but a thin little thing. Hell, looks like one of them could break you just by lookin' at you. And you thought you could outrun ten men actively patrolling a-"

"Look!" She snapped back at Deputy Beagle, the man trying what very little patience she had left, "It's not as if I had much else of a choice! It's not like I could have just walked up to one of them and calmly asked if I could go across the bridge and petition the troopers for help _killing_ them and all their friends, right? So what in the hell did you want me to do? Sit in the Outpost and play _cards_ with my new robot buddy?"

Beagle let out a sound that was half sigh and half snorted laugh, "And just where in the hell is this robot now? I ain't seen them drag nothing this way 'cept _you_, and if I recall the only bot Nash had in the Outpost wasn't gonna get fixed no time soon, 'ccording to him, which makes you a slow runner _and_ a liar."

The muscle under Heavenly's eye twitched, and she felt that if she had full use of her hands, she might be tempted to strangle the Deputy. Ever since she had been dragged into the kitchen of the Bison almost a full hour ago, he had done _nothing_ but complain. At first it was understandable - after all, he must have been waiting for some sign of hope for _days_ now - but after the constant badgering of it, she was coasting on her last nerve. They had both been equally captured so it wasn't as if _he_ had fared any better with the Gangers. If everyone in the town was _half_ as annoying as he was, she was ready to throw in with the convicts and run the _lot_ of them into the wastes.

Though, bound at the hands and sitting on her knees in a kitchen waiting to find out how she got to die probably wasn't how the Gangers did their recruiting.

She hadn't made it to the bridge - _that_ went without saying. She had barely made it a full ten paces out of the Outpost before someone was shouting and pointing a gun at her which looked as though it could _eat_ her gun and still have room to finish up with her _face_, and which made it very clear that she was _going_ to listen to instructions very carefully lest she find out just how edible a nine millimeter really was. They hadn't just shot her, there and then, and she had some very grim and unsavory ideas as to _why_, and none of them were ideas she particularly wanted to focus on. They had been kind enough to take her handgun and the half broken rifle that Sunny had given her, the backpack with her stims, water and ammunition in it, and then bind her hands with rope that felt as if it had been soaking for several centuries in putrid molasses. They also had been _so courteous_ to ignore her questions on what they were planning to do with her, and dump her into a kitchen with the town's most annoying authority figure.

Presumably their plan was to make her kill _herself_ just to get away from the sound of his voice. Or maybe they knew that if he never stopped _talking_ then she would never have time to devise a suitable escape plan.

"Look," She began, striving to remain relaxed and keep her tone even, "We _have_ to get out of here, okay? Those men are going to _kill_ us both, and we're wasting valuable time sitting here arguing - we need a plan, something to-"

"Ah, hell, here we go." Beagle shifted his weight, and she swiveled her head to stare at him indignantly as he interrupted her, "You _civvies_ thinkin' playing hero is all fun and games. Well guess what, Missy? Law enforcement ain't no cake walk. We can't just go in there and give it our best, cause our best is just gonna get us both shot. So you wanna see if you can eat a bullet and live to tell the tale? Be my guest. Me, I'm going to wait for the right _opportunity_."

"The right-" Hev actually gagged on the mere stupidity of that sentence, and choked off a cough before she could continue, "What - What opportunity? What, you hope that when they come in to shoot you in the head you'll be able to _bleed _on them till they _die_?" Hev's words caught again and she felt her face flush with utter incredulity of the whole situation. She was going to die in a dirty kitchen with the dumbest man on the planet. She had an express feeling that if she weren't so incredibly _angry_ at him she'd be overwhelmed by a tide of terrified desperation that she knew swelled and crested just beneath the stymie of aggravation.

"Look here, Miss-"

Whatever else the good Deputy was going to say was cut off quite suddenly with a bang that echoed throughout the desolate old building. The twin doors that separated the kitchen from the wide room that the Gangers were using as a - well, come to think of it she didn't know nor want to know what they were using the large room for, just that there were dirty cots and _lots_ of empty liquor bottles - flew open. They slammed against both walls and presented a man who deemed it necessary to make such an entrance despite carrying the largest gun she had ever laid eyes on. To her, he could have _crawled_ into the room and still grabbed her full attention just by the fact he was holding a shiny metal _death machine_ that was almost as long as she was tall. A lick of blue and red flame sputtered at the end of it, and some small, analytical part of her mind noted that it was a pre-war flame thrower of some sort.

All other parts of her mind were screaming.

"Say we do." The man with the flaming beacon of death wasn't paying the shaking young Doctor nor the idiot beside her any mind, instead carrying on a conversation that, presumably, he had been having on the other side of the door, "Say we get a nice, pretty fuckin' penny for her pretty little head. Ain't gonna do nothing but bring more attention to town. We don't need that shit. We got a hostage. We don't need two."

"Man, this is bullshit!" A second man followed the first into the kitchen, thankfully not carrying anything like what the first was, but was armed nonetheless with a rifle slung over and hidden behind his shoulder, "We could get a _damn_ good price. Head up to Vegas and hit one of the whore houses, or go out east and hand her to the Legion. Fuck man, I'm thinkin' about the _future_ here and you're just pissing your pants over the goddamn NC-"

And that was all the second man got out. Hev was pretty sure it was the 'pissing your pants' comment that set him off, because it was around that time that he hefted the incinerator up with both arms, tilting it at an angle and bringing it quickly to the right, smacking the flaming barrel into the second man's face. A heavy thud preceded the second convict crumpling to the ground in a heap, a wide red burn spreading in an ugly, misshapen pattern across his face.

"Someone get this pussy into a bed and give him a stim. Should fuckin' know better." And he was shaking his head at the _audacity_ of someone talking back to him, and Hev could only stare in wide eyed horror and wonder if maybe what Checkered Coat had done to her was an _honorable_ thing out here. She had no disillusions of the fact that if this gangster would react in such a way to someone who was working _for_ him, there wasn't a shot in hell of her walking out of this place alive.

Her heart was slamming in her chest, the pace quickening as the man turned to the pair kneeling on the ground, apparently satisfied with the example of his leadership qualities and ready to move onto the next priority. The Deputy was blissfully quiet for once, and that at least was a single blessing she could count on in this horrific situation. She couldn't bring her eyes up to the Ganger that strode a single, menacing step forward, was unable to read his expression or will her voice to speak. She couldn't tear her eyes from the flickering flame and the beast of a gun it danced upon.

"W-wait," Hev found her voice just as she pushed herself back, falling off her knees and onto her backside, her wrists struggling and writhing in their bound before her, "Just, just wait, I could, I could _help _you, just hang on -"

He took another step forward, and she could swear she could feel the heat from the flame of the weapon, "You got somethin' to say, girl, you best get to sayin' it. You being here confuses my guys, makes 'em all think about shit besides what I tell them to do- can't have that."

Her mind was racing, barely keeping in time with her heart, her stomach tightening into a hundred knots that she felt would never come undone, "I could - I could make you more explosives! Or - or drugs! I know how!"

This proposition seemed to give him pause, as his eyes lowered to his gun - or maybe he was just checking the fuel and releasing the safety, "Drugs, huh. So you're like a scientist or somethin'."

"I'm a - I'm -I'm a veterinarian I can -" Hev's voice was raising to a squeak, a shrill and savage thing, as everything was happening too goddamn _fast_ and she needed _time_ because she had to get out of this. Because this couldn't be the end and she couldn't _die_ in some goddamn kitchen with the dumbest man on Earth staring at her blankly and not _doing_ anything to help her. So _fucking much _for chivalry.

"A what?" His voice, in opposition, was almost serene, as if he was clicking on a radio or preparing his dinner or anything else as equally mundane - she could at least feel at ease in that he had done this so many times before that burning her alive wasn't even evoking a bit of _excitement_ in his voice. He clicked something nonchalantly on his face of the gun, and she heard something hum within it that made her panic rise to a new high. Being shot int he face was one thing - _burning_ to death was quite another.

"It means I -" Her face blanked and she watched that gun shift, saw somewhere in the corner of her eye the Deputy kick away and _still_ not help, his face almost as pale with terror as hers was, "I make drugs. Lots and lots of drugs! So you should put that _down_ and let me -" The words were beginning to choke and clot uselessly in her throat and were definitely _not_ working as she was planning them to, and the belated instincts to just drop all hope and try her hand at outrunning a flame thrower were bubbling to the surface of her mind. Feral panic was shoving all semblance of reason and logic aside, and her legs were twitching with the animal need to run away - even if, beneath it all, she knew she wouldn't make it.

"Hey Lou," The man with the large gun half turned as he heard - what she could only assume was - his name, and Hev took that moment to turn her head to the Deputy, mouthing out the words _do something_ with wide and terrified eyes. The Deputy squinted his eyes back to her in perplexity, still pale and frightened and still all the _idiot_ she knew him to be. She thought, just before she looked away, she saw him mouth the word _opportunity_, and with that she made the silent vow that, as soon as she _was_ on fire, she was going to do the world a favor and _jump_ on him as her last act.

"Man, check this shit out, little robot was trying to come in through a window, man! I thought I was just fuckin' _high_, man, but he floated right in and started-"

'Lou' was no amused. It seemed he wanted to return to lighting her on fire _post haste_, "Holy shit. Are you seriously bringing me this fuckin' thing? Get the fuck out of here before I smoke your dumb ass."

_Little robot_ was more than enough to draw Hev's attention to the frame of the door, pushing herself back onto her knees and leaning to the right to see around Lou's hefty frame. It was, in fact, ED that hovered just behind one of the gangsters, floating slowly and peacefully forward, a pace equivalent, she thought, to someone taking a relaxing stroll through the park. She didn't know what the gangsters would do to him - target practice, probably - and even faced with her grisly impending incineration, she couldn't help but feel a twinge of pity for the little robot. She had probably triggered some long forgotten protocol in him when she fixed him, his programming forcing him to follow her and, inevitably, find his doom.

Though in all honesty it was her own doom she was more concerned with at that point, and so she was just pushing herself to her feet to make a frantic, panic driven _run_ for it when she heard it.

_DA-dada-DA-dada-dadadada-DA_

ED was piping some sort of cutesy little western _diddy_. Hev managed to rise to her feet only to stare for a full two seconds in confusion at the bot, a look that Lou and his second shared. She wasn't quite sure _where_ that had come from, and ED was still floating pleasantly forward, the very picture of simplicity and innocence. Her mind conjured a nonsensical scenario, based on the little bot's behavior, that he had come to _save_ her with some catchy cowboy tune, and she had a half a second to consider this before all _hell _broke loose.

The dark room was lit for one brilliant moment in a haze of red as something bright and sharp escaped from the tiny arm that arched below ED's frame, a distinct sound accompanying it; something like a hiss but with more menace, more unliving bite to it. She knew it, after only a second, to be a _laser_, that ED was shooting _lasers_, and that she was fairly certain _none_ of the pre-war eyebots she had heard of had come equipped with _beams_ that could disintegrate a man.

The room flashed once, and then twice, throwing haphazard shadows across the wall and leaving Lou _screaming_ like a Brahmin giving birth.

Hev couldn't precisely remember how long she had been on her feet, nor when she had took a long kick back and pressed herself against the wall to the immediate right of the door. The last few moments she could recall, at that point, was bringing her gaze to rest on the convict's screaming leader and taking immediate notice to the fact that his eyelids were gone and his eyes were dribbling out of their sockets; white paste caked with red. And she was incredibly _lucky_ that he had turned to speak to the man who had brought ED in, because his hands had gone into uncontrollable spasms and he was shooting giant, exploding balls of flame into the large room beyond the kitchen, eliciting more screaming and shouting from within it's confines.

She could hear the thud of bodies hitting the ground, the roar of the flame thrower tossing out enormous spheres of vehemence. The room beyond was glowing phosphorescently, fingers of flame licking at the opening between the rooms, the madness outside threatening to teem and spill over into the one she was in. Her hands balled into fists and Lou wouldn't stop _screaming_ and Deputy Beagle was still laying motionless on the ground doing absolutely nothing to help. Balls of liquid flame shot out and exploded with anything they came in contact with, and she could hear more men rushing into the room beyond, seeking to end the source of the mayhem.

And then she heard them catch, screaming, on fire.

The peal of gunfire echoed through the ancient hotel and she could hear bullets ricocheting off the metal of the tables and the fridge in the kitchen. A few confused convicts, as lost in the chaos as she was, apparently thought they were under attack and were actively _shooting_ into the kitchen, seeking to dispose of the threat with the flame thrower, unknowing that it was their own _leader_ tossing giant, flaming orbs of destruction into the room. The acrid smell of burning flesh seeped into the kitchen on a cloud of black smoke, lingering beside the stench of gasoline, and when paired with the screaming of the men outside and the roar of the flame thrower erupting, she was half convinced this was some sort of bizarre nightmare.

Lou took a bullet to the throat and finally collapsed, twitching, into a heap, and the sudden lack of explosions was enough to pull her clear out of shock and dismay. Bullets continued to hail in from the room beyond and she shrank helplessly against the wall, uncertain where to _go_ exactly or how she was going to deal with however many were left, because it was probably a few more than a single unarmed woman could handle.

_DA-dada-DA-dada-dadadada-DA_

Her eyes snapped to ED with a sudden, alarming revelation; she had reactivated some kind of crazy robot _death machine_. The bot began a slow, certain hover back into the wide room, and she could hear the men outside shout above the screaming and shift their aim. Her robot death machine was about to be on the receiving end of a hail of bullets, and she had her doubts that he, no matter how incredible that little stunt he just pulled was, would be able to handle on his own.

But they weren't shooting at _her_ and so she felt a little more reassured at departing her wall.

Hev raced forward to the opening of the door, staring out at the utter anarchy of the room beyond. The makeshift barricade of wooden tables in the center of the room were all aflame, filling the room with a haze of smoke that brought tears to her eyes as soon as she neared the door. Three men with guns pointed at ED were trying to maneuver around the flames that had consumed dirty mattresses, wooden furniture and a handful of convicts alike. The whole room was filled with the sort of thick heat that one's body would tell one firmly to get the _fuck_ out of, and breathing in the smoke lent a certain burn to her lungs that she could really have done without.

Then again, it could have been _her_ burning. By all odds it should have been. She could count twice now that she had effectively escaped certain death by the skin of her teeth.

Which, she considered thoughtfully, was a very strange expression.

But she hadn't any more time for frivolous thoughts, and she ran forward to the three men laying on the ground just in front of the door. Of the three, one was fully engulfed in flames, and so anything useful that he might have had on him was immediately ruled out. Hev turned to the other two, moving first, of course, to the large gun on the large man who had no eyes and a hole in his throat. She leaned down with her bound hands, holding the rope to the fire at the end, which in her mind worked a hell of a lot better than it did in _reality_, and she ended up cursing rather colorfully for a few seconds as she burned the hell out of her wrists but was able to break free of the rope in the end. She moved her hands up, grabbing the flame thrower by the handle and the trigger-lever, and hefting it up into her grasp -

- And very nearly yanking her arms clear out of their sockets from it's sheer _weight_.

And so another brilliant plan was subsequently discarded and she turned to contestant number three; the man who Lou had knocked unconscious - boy was _he_ going to be surprised if he ever woke up. She had noticed the rifle on his back when he entered, but only that the wooden stock was rather wide, wider than any of the guns she had used in the past. Examining it now, more closely, she saw that the barrel was more like a wide pipe than anything else, and that whatever it shot had to be very thick and heavy, even if the gun itself was rather short and light by comparison. Hev pulled the strap free of the unconscious man, giving the nature of the gun no more deliberation - it was a _gun_ and as long as it shot something other than _stuffed animals_ she was in business - and she had no time to be picky because she could already hear bullets tinging off of ED's metal frame.

Heavenly turned her thick, strange rifle to the Ganger in the middle of the room, placed it's stock firmly against her shoulder like Sunny had taught her to, and squeezed back the trigger without another moment's hesitation. There was a distinctive kick that pushed her weight onto her back leg as it ran through her body, harder than the rifle she had shot with Sunny, more pressure and pain on the shoulder it sat against. But she just barely noticed any of this because her eyes were wide as saucers as she stared at the effects of the rifle.

It was preceded by a dull _thump_ sound that wasn't impressive by any means. What _was_ impressive was the blast that followed, the dust and rubble kicked up in a mist and the pieces of the Ganger's bodies that flew into the air in opposite directions. The whole room let off a terrible shutter than shook age old dust from the ceiling and made the building groan with the havoc of the battle. Hev instinctively had pressed the trigger back again before even viewing the results, hearing the click of an empty tube but no longer _caring_ because someone wonderful, a long time ago, had invented a _gun_ that shot _grenades_.

Pre-war America must have been a magical place.

A smoking body that had been nearing ED finally succumbed to multiple laser burns and fell to the ground, joined a moment later by the pieces of his comrade hailing down with the settling dust. Hev remained staring wide eyed at the utter destruction before her, eyes tearing from the smoke and hands shaking from the adrenaline that pounded still through her veins. The final ganger stood on the opposite side of the room from her, sharing in the same shocked silence, looking from fire to robot to grenade-launcher-toting _veterinarian_, and then dropped his gun and made a frenzied run for the door.

And he would have made it, too, if the good Deputy hadn't chosen that moment to make himself something other than useless. He was suddenly there next to her, a pistol in his hand that snapped a flash of light twice and the Ganger crashed to the ground with a cloud of dust and two new holes in his back. He brought his gun back and holstered it, looking over the room with a smug glint in his eye that, had she not just survived the most ridiculous battle of all time, may have infuriated her.

Hev stood absolutely still, as if expecting to wake any moment from some serene day dream and be staring down that awful man and his gigantic gun again. She still held the grenade launcher in both hands - she wasn't quite sure she was ever going to put the thing down - staring over the wavering flames, the growing amount of smoke, and the disfigured bodies. ED floated pleasantly over to her, an infrequent buzz or pop the only sounds he now made, apparently saving his cowboy diddy only for when he put his game face on.

Neither she nor the Deputy spoke for a length of time that must have spanned minutes. Maybe neither one of them could understand, or believe, exactly what had transpired here. Heavenly had an empty feeling inside her, not necessarily a _bad_ or depressing feeling, just a strange void where she was certain she should have been reacting. Maybe it was just that she didn't know how to react - maybe the Deputy didn't either. All she knew was that she was _alive_ and the Powder Gangers were dead, somehow, against every notion of logic she possessed. She supposed, if anything, the only thing she was feeling was an absurd amount of relief - so much so that it whited out all her other senses and emotions and left her standing there blankly - but very much _alive_.

She was the one to finally break the silence, her voice slightly cracked from begging for her life and the inhalation of smoke, "I told you I had a robot."

...

"... And all of this ... _Actually_ happened, Miss?" The Lieutenant exchanged a glance with his second, who make a noncommittal gesture with her hand. The bright afternoon sun lit the tent to a warm glow, the air inside just stifling enough to leave a light sheen of sweat on her forehead. Having spent the last two hours picking her way around a burning building, however, the heat in the tent didn't bother her _at all_. It was something of a vacation after clearing out the lip of Hell itself, and even if the NCR soldiers were each casting incredulous glances in her direction, they weren't actively trying to sell her into slavery or set her on _fire, _so she couldn't complain.

The Powder Gangers had decided that Primm wasn't quite worth the trouble, and all it took was the screaming deaths of a dozen or so of their men. They hadn't stuck around to help extinguish the fires, either; they left that to Beagle and Hev and a few volunteers from the town. It wasn't exactly a fun job, but the fire was mostly contained to the room where the fighting had taken place, and she hadn't wanted to just leave them that mess to deal with; that didn't seem right to her. She had found the missing proprietor of the Outpost among the volunteers, a man named Nash, and he had been so kind as to tell her that she could keep the little robot that had saved her life.

Of course, she suspected this was because she had told him the whole, unabridged story, and he may have been concerned that _his_ eyes were next on the robot's list. Hev wasn't going to complain, however, as she was _mostly_ sure that the robot wasn't a danger to her, and would actually prove beneficial, if today was any evidence. Though, if ED ever looked at _her_ and played that little cowboy diddy, she may piss her pants.

Before she left he had also been able to tell her precious little about the package that she had carried - nothing that seemed out of the ordinary, and certainly nothing that, to her, attached the sort of significance to it that would justify killing an innocent courier.

The NCR was quite interested in where exactly the smoke they saw piling out of town had been coming from, and why exactly the Powder Gangers had suddenly made for the hills with their tails between their legs. Hev had told the same story to three separate men - each giving her the same blank, bewildered look and each mumbling something about fetching their superior - before finally she was brought to Lieutenant Hayes. The Lieutenant had brought her to his tent, sat her down at a table, brought a pitcher of purified water and very calmly asked her to repeat the story one more time.

And then stared at her with a blank, bewildered look.

"Miss Heavenly, you said you were-"

"It- It's Doctor, actually. Doctor Monroe, please ..." She interjected gently, feeling an unease in her stomach from hearing her first name. She toyed with the tin cup they had given her, rolling it between her palms and watching the last few drops of water within roll back and forth with her motion.

"Sorry. Doctor Monroe, you said you were from Modoc? That's ... Is that where you learned to fix, um ..." His eyes raised up to the little robot floating nearby, as if searching for a more professional way to say _crazed metal killing machines_, "... Pre-war technology?"

Hev's eyes were still focused on her cup, and she nearly missed the Lieutenant's second coming forward with the pitcher to refill it. The water was warm, but blissfully purified, and Hev wasn't about to turn down free water - not in a goddamn _desert._ She held her cup forward, waiting for the soft sounds of moving water to subside before she answered, "Yes. Well, mostly. My Mother was a Doctor from Vault City. She taught me everything she knew about ..." Heavenly blinked, looking up from her cup, "I'm sorry, what does this have to do with anything?"

The Lieutenant was having his own cup refilled, and so his eyes weren't on her as he answered, "I'm just tryin' to figure out why a nice young girl from NCR - a Doctor, to boot - would be way the hell out here in the Wastes, miles from civillization." His eyes dropped down and he smiled a little, "At least, as close to civillization as you can find in the Mojave."

Heavenly stared at him, trying to summate what exacly he was getting at. Did he think she was lying? That she was some kind of crazy, robot fixing pyromaniac who was going to set _fire_ to a building, kill a bunch of convicts and then flee into the horizon like a tiny, vigilante madwoman? Tilting her head, she must have worn on her face the suspicion she felt, because he amended his questioning a moment later.

"You just don't look like you belong out here, Doctor. Whatever it is you're doing ... Maybe you should start thinkin' about heading _home_." And his emphasis on that single word was enough that Hev seriously considered doing just that. The very word brought images of rows of crops surrounded by sun bleached fences, the soft prattling of Brahmin in wide fields, the sound of her Brother's children running maniacally through the house. Hev felt her eyes burn with the truth of it all; she _didn't_ belong out here.

But there was more to it than that, and she really wanted to believe that it wasn't only _pride_ that was pushing her forward. She had never been overly concerned about her contract with the Express - she had _died_ for that package and that alone should have voided her end of the agreement. A man had shot her. Shot her and buried her in a shallow grave so far from home her family would have never known, had she not gotten back up _out_ of it. Maybe following him across the stretch of a place so forsaken that it had been called a desert even _before_ the rest of the world had become one wasn't the brightest idea, but she had to eke out some reasoning for her death. She had to know that it was _important_, maybe, that he had a better reason to kill an innocent girl than just being _able_ to. She had to know that the world hadn't become such terrible, utter _shit_.

Or maybe she just wanted to see the look on his face when she found him.

"I'm going to ... To Vegas ..." At first words failed her, and her gaze dropped away. You would think after clearing the town of dangerous convicts she would at least get a '_thank you_' and not a '_maybe you should head on home now little girl ya hear, gahaha'_. Heavenly drained the small cup of water, an acceptable delay after finding her mouth was dry and she needed a few seconds to gather her thoughts. Lowering the cup again, she weighed the options in her mind, seeing that far off image of home slipping further and further away in her memories, "I'm _looking_ for someone, that's all."

The Lieutenant paused thoughtfully, and she knew there was a second that his eyes rose to the raised, pinkened mark on her forehead. Leaning back in his chair, he waited another moment to see if she was going to elaborate on that statement, and when she failed to, he let out a sigh, "Well, listen. Why don't you spend the night here tonight. You can head out for Nipton in the mornin'."

Heavenly looked up, confusion pressing her brows together, "Nipton?"

He continued as if he hadn't been interrupted, "You head down along the road through Nipton, up through Novac, and then up north past Boulder City. It's the trail the caravans are taking now, it's more or less safe long as you stick to the roads."

She could vaguely recall Sunny telling her to follow that same path, and preaching something almost identical about sticking to the roads. But Heavenly had mapped it out on the Pip-Boy that the Doc back in Goodsprings had given her - Primm and Novac were almost parallel, sitting on opposite sides of a rocky area in the center. Checkered Coat had gotten, at the very least, a full week head start on her, and she felt she _had_ to catch him before he hit Vegas. If he made it back to his home turf there was no telling what sort of muscle he would have, and even not expecting _her_ to show up fresh from the grave, she wasn't so naive to think a man who dressed as fancy as he would walk around his own city without protection. If the road north out of Goodsprings was cut off, then that meant he was following the same road they were telling her to take - and that meant she needed to find a shortcut through the mountains.

She needed to find a way to cut through, and reach Novac directly, roads be damned. Besides, why was everyone so goddamn concerned about keeping her _safe_? She had a killer robot now!

"Yeah, sure." She lied, reaching forward to set the cup down, "That was the road I was planning to take. Um, thanks .. So I'll just, go get some rest ..."

She stood to leave and he spoke again, making her pause just as she rose from her chair, "Circumstances aside, the Gangers wouldn't have been cleared out of this town if it weren't for you. These people are safe from convicts - Primm is, at least. So thank you, for that. Now you take care out there, Doctor Monroe."

Heavenly smiled as she exited the tent; that was all she wanted to hear. 

_All the reviews are appreciated, thank you! _


	5. Chapter 5

The bones stared up at her with sockets as wide as her fist, bleached an unnatural white from too many years laying unguarded to the constant assault of the sun's harsh rays. It's mass was slowly falling hidden under the sand, only half buried now after so many years of complete exposure, only now finding a slow grave with the aid of the wind and the desolate earth. The skull laid on it's side, it's mouth hanging open eternally in a silent scream, flat molars cracked and crumbling under the combined pressure of age and sun. It's shattered ribs struggled up out of the sand in uneven pillars that were chipped and deteriorating slowly like some macabre, alien hand. Each ashen finger a ghastly monument to a brutal, savage death, unknown and forgotten in the onslaught of time and the midst of a barren desert. Each an intrinsic omen screaming at her to find another path.

"Well." Heavenly spoke dryly to the little bot behind her, "That's a good sign."

Not that the entirety of the desert she had been combing wasn't filled with nearly identical 'good signs' - she couldn't go an hour without seeing the remains of _something_ that died a horrible death. The Mojave wasn't a very scenic place, she was quickly learning, unless one finds sun bleached bones and bare, wiry weeds to be things of unparalleled beauty. And she was on the right road to becoming the official scenery _consultant_ for the Mojave with how much of it she had seen at the foot of the long mountain as she searched for a way through. She had set out at the crack of dawn for the cliffs that separated Primm and Novac, had been up and down hills of sand and dead grass, down a deserted railroad track and across a small, swampy area that didn't _smell_ like it was swampy because of _water_, and hadn't seemed any closer to finding her goal. So, she considered, even if this was a true and terrible omen of her turning into a cow and then dying, she wasn't in any condition to heed the warning and head back to the road.

She was utterly drenched in sweat - she had long ago taken her leather jacket off and stashed it in her pack, pulled her hair into a messy bun and sweat was _still_ absolutely dripping off of her face. Her legs were burning to the point of giving out on her from the constant dip and climb of the hills, her feet aching on all sides and surrounded by socks soaked through with sweat. She hadn't realized just how far she had made it until she took the time to turn back and look off the raised, rocky surface she now stood on. The heat rose off the sand in eerie, transparent waves, distorting the land spread out beneath her, making the view of Primm's far-off roller coaster seem like a watery vision of a long forgotten dream. The land swelled in uneven, irregular lumps of hills and tall, wide rocks, and just _looking_ at them made her calves cramp in protest. It was very apparent that the only path she could make was forward, and the only way to find a safe place to rest was to walk it.

"What?" She wiped sweat from her brow, and enough condensation covered her palm to impel her to shake her hand off a moment later. She leaned down, tilting her head to the cow skull, pursing her lips to it's empty sockets, "Stop looking at me like that. It's not like _you_ had a grenade launcher." ED whirred softly, as if on cue - though for all she knew he could have meant it to be. She had the sneaking suspicion he had been gifted with some ingenious program for impeccable timing - _heroic_ even - if the debacle at Primm was any indication. Though thoughts like that, and actions like speaking to a long dead _cow_ also gave Hev the suspicion that she was slowly succumbing to heat stroke. Or that she was desperate for someone to speak to that wasn't a merrily floating robot. Or that the wasteland was slowly driving her crazy. Whatever it was, baking in the sun wasn't going to lead to anything but ending up looking like her bovine friend.

Hev adjusted the rifle slung over her shoulder, stepping over the bones and forward into the pass. The first thing she noticed was that it was fairly wide - two rocky cliff faces rose on either side of her path, spread out wide at the bottom but rising upwards at a steady convexity as though reaching towards one another. The two sides never met, however, and never came close to meeting, as even at their nearest point Hev could have walked side by side with the tin man and the cowardly lion and still had a comfortable amount of personal space. On the ground it was even more spacious, and ignoring the infrequent bone or dead animal, it seemed like a relatively safe path. The sides wove a twisting path, always parallel to one another, fitting together like puzzle pieces pulled apart. Opposing sides of the cliffs hid portions of the path but never came far enough into the center to obscure her view of the exit beyond. She wondered shortly why the caravans weren't making use of this shortcut - the path up to it had been somewhat steep and rocky, but nothing a brahmin couldn't tread, and the pass itself was wide, level, and shaded from the sun because of the tall cliffs that cradled it. Heavenly continued forward, despite the quiet nagging of some unspoken feeling in the back of her head, followed by a silent and peaceful ED floating in her wake.

The sun was high in the sky but no longer at it's peak, and if it had been a little later she would have actually considered _camping_ in the little pass. She hadn't seen any wildlife, she realized, even leading up to it, which was fortunate since she had discovered just recently that a forty millimeter grenade round was _slight_ overkill for a single botfly. She still wasn't a terribly gifted marksman, however, and so she had employed a new, genius strategy - guard her face and wait for the sound of ED's laser to stop firing. She usually just ended up wasting ammunition before the little robot inevitably killed everything in front of him _anyways_, so she deemed this plan to be more cost efficient, if nothing else.

The shade was offering her a much needed break from the sun's endless barrage of heat, and her eyes adjusted quickly to the shadowed area. Hev smiled to herself and allowed her pace to quicken somewhat, seeing the stream of sunlight at the end of the pass, peeking through the curtain of the two dark cliff faces that wanted to, but couldn't meet. She had made it to the middle of the mountain already, with barely another whimper from her sore legs. She wagered she would be out of the pass and half way to Novac within the hour, as long as she didn't run into any botflies or molerats. If she were lucky, she would find Checkered Coat still in the town after taking the _long_ way around the mountains and be utterly speechless in the face of the girl he had killed.

Her thoughts wandered languidly as she moved, brushing from one thing to another without any real purpose behind them. She tried to imagine his face, as she moved through the pass, tried to remember any sort of detail about it. Tried to think up something witty and sarcastic to say when she finally saw him again. Wondered exactly what she was going to _do_ about finding him, if she really had it inside of her to _kill_ someone. She wasn't in denial; she knew she had killed those men back in Primm, and before that in Goodsprings. But it had seemed _different_ then - all reaction and adrenaline and do or die. It wasn't her tracking a man across the whole of Nevada just to put a bullet in his head. Actually staring someone down and _killing_ them seemed like something beyond her ability. Hev let out a soft sigh, taking in a deep breath and keeping her eyes focused on the path forward, on the nearing light at the end of the pass.

The smell was what she noticed first.

It wasn't necessarily a slow or faint thing. It was just that she hadn't taken the moment to _notice_ that it was all around her. All she could smell was her own sweat and the heat and the baking of rock and sand - and now that she was in the shade she took a moment to really _smell_ it and realized for the first time that, maybe, this hadn't been a good idea.

It was death. It smelled like decay.

The sensation crept up on her, and even sweating bullets as she was, she felt a definitive chill run up the course of her spine. She tried to convince herself that it most likely smelled like death _everywhere_ in the desert, and it was only the brief reprieve from the sun's heat that was allowing her to smell it now. This reasoning wasn't enough to calm her though, and she was beginning to consider turning around and walking straight out of the little pass. Something simply didn't feel _right_, and it was the same nagging feeling that had pestered her since she first stepped into the shade.

Past the still silence of her thoughts, she heard a soft, muted crunch, and her leading foot trailed against the sand and came to a slow stop. It was ahead of her, the sound, just past a rock that pressed in from the right, obscuring her view of the source. It was followed by a quiet grinding that was so subtle and light she wondered if it hadn't been there all along; if she had been hearing this terrible warning but not realizing it for what it was. The sound was smothered and wet, soft and constant and the steady, broken rhythm of it reminded her of a dog with a bone. She wanted to believe that was all that was beyond that deviation of rock; a coyote with a kill. A single coyote would be nothing that she - and by that she meant ED - couldn't handle. The wind whistled softly down the split in the mountain and Heavenly felt her knees weaken and shake.

She could see clearly the exit of the path before her, still distant, seemingly more so now than it had been a minute ago. The space before and behind was divided evenly - if she were going to get out of the path, it would take just as much time to go forward as to turn back. And besides that, she insisted stubbornly, it was just a damned coyote. Maybe the whole pass was one big coyote den.

And even though she was _certain_ it was a coyote, when she started forward again, she did so very quietly. She first moved against the left cliff face - opposite of where the sound was coming from - not quite pressed against it yet because it was a _coyote_ and she was being ridiculously precautious. Her hand brushed the rough surface of the wall, stepping silently and carefully over bits of bone and small rocks, following the curve of the cliff and keeping her eyes towards the noise. ED followed behind her, faithful and quiet as ever, refraining from even a random whirr or pop, as if intuiting her precaution.

She moved around the curve of the rock.

It was _not_ a coyote.

It's back was to her, but it was the largest damn _back_ she had ever seen. It was upright on two legs that were shorter than it's gigantic arms, hunched slightly but no less intimidating. It rose up, towering above her, it's skin a thick, leathery tan, weathered and worn and perfectly adapted in all the ways she was not. It's entire massive frame seemed to be one huge, slick muscle; it's arms bulging with coils of strength and it's legs flexing with the slight shifts of movement it made. It looked faintly reptilian, but what species it had derived from was impossible to tell from it's back. It's two thick arms ended in hands whose palm alone was as long as her torso, and which was topped in slightly curved claws each as long as her arm. A single swipe from something like _that_ could gut her in the blink of an eye - it could gut her on _accident_ if it flicked it's wrist to look at the time.

She wasn't quite thinking straight, any longer. In fact, all coherent thought had went right the fuck out the door as soon as she caught full sight of the monstrosity in front of her. She found she couldn't breathe, that sheer terror had clotted her throat and stabbed pains into her lungs, her heart thundering against her rib cage and sending blood pounding through her ears. She felt the weight of something settle against her chest, a fear so grand, an emotion so overwhelming that she couldn't even be bothered to feel _more_ afraid when she realized that the thing was grinding it's teeth against a rib cage that looked unmistakably human.

She wasn't _moving_ anymore, and to her, that was a problem. The pop of a bone was the only thing that could make her shaking legs move, and as they did so she had to repeat to herself, passed the screaming intensity of terror, that she had to be _really fucking quiet_ or she was going to die. Her back was fully pressed against the cliff face, sliding as silently as she could manage against the rock, lifting her feet excrutiatingly slowly to ensure she snapped no ancient bone nor stumbled over a forgotten corpse. Her vision was blurred with tears but stayed locked nonetheless on the creature, mind so paralyzed she could form no semblance of a contingency plan.

Plan B was _death_. There was no alternative.

And Plan B took a shuddering step towards her as the monster flinched up suddenly, pulling it's attention away from the mangled corpse. A long snout filled with teeth too large to fit unseen in it's mouth lifted to the sky, and it tilted it's horned head back as it audibly sniffed the air. She hadn't stopped moving, as slow and incremental a progress as it was, but seeing it move sent a queasy, nauseous feeling down into the pit of her stomach. A low, guttural growl rose in it's throat, and it tilted it's head in her direction, and even though it was the _stupidest_ thing she could have possibly done, panic overcame her and she stopped moving. Heavenly pushed herself against the rock wall, wishing she could be impossibly smaller than she was, wishing she could go back and never go down that stupid path. Tears spilled out over her cheeks, and the thing turned it's huge, ugly head to fully look at her - only, even in her terror, she noticed that it wasn't _looking_ at anything. It's eyes were mottled and gray, cast over with a dull sheen that resembled some form of glaucoma. It sniffed the air again, a short, poignant snort that sent little flecks of blood shaking off it's jaw. It was obvious it could smell her, and hear her, so not seeing her, presumably, wasn't going to keep it from skewering her on a claw and devouring her whole.

The claws on it's feet scraped against rock and bone alike as it turned slowly, little pebbles scattering beneath it's movement, it's unseeing eyes scanning the canyon wall. It's lips began to curl back over those monstrous curved fangs, a sound rising in it's throat like a gurgle that climbed sloppily into a growl, and that was the most that she could take. The fear overwhelmed her and she let out a soft, strained whine from her throat, her will no longer able to hold it back.

Something happened to it's face - a twitch, somewhat - like it was realizing something.

Like it had found her.

The creature took a step forward, dropping the remains that it held in it's left claw, it's body moving with all the fluid grace of a perfectly evolved killer. The pass was wide, but not _that_ wide - it would be on her in a matter of seconds, and she knew with a certainty that it was going to kill her; that her luck had finally ran out. Past the hot tears that streamed down her face, she found herself praying for one last kindness out of the wasteland - that it would be quick. It's legs twisted and it turned to her, a monster looming over her, all muscle and blades and the epitome of every nightmare she had never had. She felt a scream coil up around her throat and choke her, a dry strangled croak all she was able to release as the smell of blood and dead flesh invaded her senses.

_DA-dada-DA-dada-dadadada-DA_

She had precisely two seconds to think about how much _worse_ things could get before she heard it. Her eyes shot wide and she turned to the bot. No matter how _well_ things had gone the last time she had heard that, there wasn't a shot in hell of ED being able to kill this monster - even if he went for the eyes. Hev's mouth still hung open in a silent, terrified scream, but as the little robot hovered forward for the attack she found an urge bubbling up inside her that she hadn't the strength to deny. The monster swiveled it's head to the bot, sniffing blankly but finding no scent of anything living. It may have been enough to save them both, if it had ended with that, because Heavenly hadn't _thought_ about running, but found she was already moving.

Her legs were pounding forward, reaching hopelessly for that sliver of light between the cliffs, fueled by a sudden and overwhelming _need_ to be away, a primitive instinct to _survive_. She hadn't known she could move that fast, and hadn't slowed as she heard the split of a laser shooting behind her. The guttural cry of the monster echoed through the pass, bounced off the walls and reverberated against her insides, but still she ran. And the only thing that slowed her was the squeal of crunching metal, of claw striking a hull and a hull striking rock. She heard the eyebot smack against a cliff face, bounce to the ground and roll, scraping it's antennae and making the soft, constant buzz of a broken machine.

The opening was close; the light spilled in over her, and she could see the roll of a steep incline that led down and out of the mountain. Everything inside her screamed to continue running, to not stop, not _breathe,_ until she was on the other side of the pass and _away_ from whatever God forsaken _thing_ was behind her. And against every better instinct she had, she paused - she didn't _stop_ because she wasn't an _idiot_ - but she did slow enough to look back.

ED was still rolling along the ground towards her, and the monster was running to catch up. She couldn't focus on that though, couldn't bring her mind to _know_ as she did that going back would mean that it would catch her. She couldn't tell herself that it was a _robot_ and her life was more important. Perhaps if she had had more time to think about what a _stupid_ decision she was making, she would have made a better one.

But she hadn't the time to think about it. She had to make a split second decision, and in that split second, she wasn't thinking of ED as a robot. She was thinking that he had saved her ass _twice_ now, and she couldn't leave him behind.

Heavenly kept her momentum as she turned, taking a few long running strides backwards towards where the robot was still rolling towards her - though considerably slower than it had been. Hev bent and grabbed at whatever her hand could grasp at - an antenna and part of his face plate, it felt like - and hefted the robot up into her arms. He was heavier than he looked, a lot heavier, in fact, but she was so pumped on terror and adrenaline that she barely took notice to the weight cradled against her chest. Hev turned on heel and continued a mad dash for the entrance of the path, for the light that seemed to sear and blind her, for the last bit of hope she had of escaping with her life.

And her robot.

The pounding in her ears kept her from hearing the scraping slam of clawed feet racing towards her, just behind her and quickly catching. Perhaps if she had been aware enough to hear how very _close_ it was on her heels, she would have lost all the dissipating bits of strength and courage she had left. Her breath came in ragged gasps, her leg muscles pounding, screaming in protest from the desperate, frenzied run. The wind hit her face just as she reached the exit of the path, the sun streaming into her eyes and blinding her, leaving her a few seconds to experience the rush of panic that came when one realizes that one is running _blind_ off a _mountain_ when suddenly, none of it mattered.

The first thing she felt was pressure and heat, and it was a confusing few seconds as her mind tried to catch up to her body. Her body was flying forward as something _slammed_ against her from behind, making a messy, ripping sound that was familiar to her, but she couldn't place from where. The heat came a moment later, a tingling sensation that burned fully over her back, and she heard something heavy and wet slap against the rocks beneath her, like someone dumping out bath water. The thoughts that followed this were muddled even further as she tumbled forward to her knees, then began a roll down a hill of hot sand that became stuck to her sweat soaked skin. The heat and pressure spread, pounding, over the entirety of her back and she realized just as she tumbled to the bottom of the hill, still clutching her robot to her chest, that it was _pain_ that scorched her back. That _tearing flesh_ was what she had heard. And that it was _blood_ that had spattered messily behind her.

Her head was swimming. She felt bile and blood rise up in her throat, and as she dragged a ragged breath into her lungs she felt her skin stretch and tighten across her back. Something sticky and hot was draining down her legs, soaking her back and leaking down into her waistband. Her head felt heavy and hot, her thoughts a jumbled mess of hysteria and slow coming deductions. Heavenly's arms finally released ED, who she thought was still making that low buzzing sound, but it could have just been the ringing in her ears. He rolled slowly away as she tumbled forward and pressed a single boot into the sand, struggling to stand.

She turned her head back, feeling horrifically sick and weak and _hot_ and sleepy. Her head was clouded and her thoughts were muddled, she had the strange sensation of being lost in her own body. Her eyes rose to the pass above her, seeing a grotesque trail of blood marking where she had rolled down the hill and away from the monster. It hadn't followed; she didn't know why, but maybe it knew it didn't matter if it did. Maybe it knew she was bleeding out.

Her back ached. A sharp stinging that, despite it all, she barely noticed through the weary, dizzy sickness of her head. She was moving forward without realizing it, forcing her legs into action, one foot in front of the other. Her whole body seemed to shake with each step, her balance barely holding her on her feet, the soft buzz of her robot forgotten behind her in her single minded determination to move forward. There was a shack in front of her; the sole housing of some abandoned farmstead, it's empty fields sending one final reminder spiraling through her mind.

One final image of home.

Her legs gave out with a slow shudder, and falling to one knee sent a current of turbulence that turned quickly to pain as it quaked through the wounds on her back. Her vision blurred and she cast it out, over the hills and the horizon, seeing what could have been the silhouettes of people in the distance, long dark fingers rising beyond the waves of heat that piled off the barren wasteland. It was equally likely that it was a hallucination brought on by blood loss, and she knew that, deep in the barely thinking portion of her mind. She opened her mouth and a dry, pathetic sound rose out of it, a soft cry cracked and inaudible against the wind and the distance. Hev rose up a single, blood covered hand, as if reaching out for them, as if she could pluck the dark figure off the horizon and place them at her side, one by one, to save her from the death that had been hounding her since she bested it the first time.

The last thought she had, as the hot sand bit against her cheek, was of the man in the Checkered Coat, of the gun he held and the darkness it brought. Maybe she hadn't even survived that. Maybe all this time death had already caught her and been content to wait. Played a game she was sure to lose.

_Ha_.

Rigged from the start.

...

Heavenly had been raised in a large family.

Her parents had been unable to have their own children, and so had taken in every wasteland orphan they had come across, herself included. As it was, she had six brothers and two sisters - all of them older save for a single younger sister - and had been raised as much by each of them as she had been by her parents and the many farmhands that came and went from the ranch as they pleased. The farm had been filled with help that her Father's good heart had recruited from all over the wasteland - it seemed he had taken it upon himself to save every worthless jet addict and penniless scavenger he had come across. Each of their jobs, he had put it, was to tend the farm and protect the family - and that was what everyone was; family. One huge, overbearing, tenacious family, filled with a score of members who had seen the very worst the wastes had to offer and couldn't dream of letting the family of their savior fall victim to any of it's atrocities. Her brothers in particular were ridiculously over protective, almost obsessively so, to the point that she could always count on there being a dark shadow listening in on her every conversation. Her Father was no better, and so she had been raised without the luxury of privacy, but with an overabundance of safety.

And it was because of this that she was very, very unaccustomed to waking up in a stranger's bed. An occurrence that had happened twice now.

Consciousness was not a slow thing to come, not this time. She snapped awake, all at once, sending any lingering bits of sluggishness or obliviousness scattering the moment her eyes opened. Terror driven dreams that she could no longer remember flooded her mind with an unconscious panic, Her heart already thundering before she could even find the strength to sit up. It was fortunate she couldn't find that strength, however, as she found a moment later that she was laying on her stomach and her back was absolutely alight with pain. She hissed in a breath, squeezing her eyes shut and wondering for a short moment if _maybe_ death could just get the fuck _on_ with it and stop teasing her.

"She's awake."

The voice was female, unfamiliar, and faintly surprised. None of these things bode very well for her, least of all the fact that, whoever it was, she hadn't been expecting her to wake up. Hev opened her eyes again, slowly, seeing a blurred figure walking towards her, and hearing a second voice pipe up from somewhere further away than the first.

"Thank God. It looked bad." The second voice was also female, but rougher, somehow. More gruff, less nonsense, and it strangely reminded her of her Father, "Guess the little thing's tougher than she looks."

The figure moved forward and there was a pain in her arm, short and quick, followed by a warmth that was unmistakably a stimpack. Or possibly morphine. Her neck was stiff and sore on the back, near her hairline, which meant that someone had been forced to inject a stim directly into her spinal column. Which meant that she had been very, very close to being dead.

The first, softer voice spoke again, presumably a Doctor, or at least someone who knew their way around a needle. She addressed Heavenly this time, or so she assumed, as she was leaning down over her, "Try not to move, girl. Just get some rest. You got yourself some kind of luck."

_Bad, _was all Hev could silently add as the warmth spread up her arm and coursed steadily through her blood. A tingling numbness spread blissfully over her back and she felt placid arms of drowsiness slip around her, weaving itself into her exhaustion and creating a combination that she couldn't resist.

...

Craig Boone was not having a good day.

Though, with the sheer amount of bad days he had been having in the last year, he wasn't quite sure what scale to measure _this_ one against. The fact that he hadn't seen a single Legionary in what was quickly becoming a full month was certainly contributing, though it wasn't the sole culprit. He had also been _trying_ - albeit largely unsuccessfully - to quit drinking, which was leaving him with a sizable amount of time spent laying awake in bed. Not that he hadn't been doing a lot of that in the last year anyways, but now he was spending his nights staring at the ceiling and being _sober_ which meant he could never start his day in a mood better than passively hostile.

It also wasn't day, though to him that would count as little more than semantics. It had been well past sundown when he had left his room, and the day would just be beginning by the time he returned. Manny had mentioned something about ghouls coming down from the old Repconn site, though the few that Boone had seen had gone down quickly and quietly. Barely an annoyance, certainly not a threat, which led him to believe Manny was just looking for excuses to speak to him. Reinforcing this notion was the ex-Khan trying to make light conversation after mentioning the ghouls. As though things were going to return to normal. As though what had happened mattered little enough that a year passing would make everything okay again.

Manny trying to speak to him was certain to make the start of his day worse. Manny trying to pretend nothing had happened was setting him on the tracks to a long night of thinking on things better left to the recesses of his memories. So even if he hadn't meant to, his former spotter had set the stage for a very long night.

He leaned back on his heels and breathed in deep the night air that was rapidly cooling with the absence of the sun. His eyes were out on the horizon, as they would be for all the night, scanning north, then east, then south, and as far west as he could crane his neck. It would go on like that all night, trying _not_ to think, trying to keep his mind on the job, trying to forget about the giant hole in his chest where a future used to be. His rough fingers brushed the leather strap of his rifle, his mind wandering unbidden to areas he was perpetually forbidding himself from going.

Dwelling on the past got him nowhere. Dwelling on the job could end up getting people killed.

North. East. South. Partially west, back towards the railroad tracks and the McBride's farm. He could see the little brunette Doctor - or at least she claimed she was a Doctor - heading back to the tent that she and her bodyguards shared. Made sense. He had heard something about a NCR trooper coming into town last night just before Boone had taken the nest, looking for a Doctor. He knew Station Charlie had to have a medic and supplies, so whatever they needed a Doctor for must have been serious. He wouldn't have listened in, but he was half hoping that it had been a Legion raid. He was pretty certain that made him a bad person, hoping for something like that, but it would have made _his_ day better, at least.

They had to have a camp, somewhere back that way. Had to be somewhere between Cottonwood and Novac, and had to be somewhere in the West. He knew because that had been the way they had taken her; back to the West while he watched to the North. They had known just what path to take to evade his notice. Knew what he was, what he had _been_, and that he would have killed every one of the sons of bitches to bring her back home.

Only he hadn't.

He felt his fist tighten around the strap of his gun, felt his jaw clenched faintly. Dwelling didn't help, but it was where his mind would go. Nothing to shoot, nothing to drink, no empty bed nor ceiling to stare at. Just empty roads and empty thoughts and all the things he _should_ have done.

Should have gone out in one final blaze of glory, fought to the death to get her out of that place. Should have taught her to use a rifle, should have shown her how to bar the door. Should have at least made the effort, should have shown her how he felt, how badly he wanted to save her, since he never got the chance to tell her. He should have charged that camp like a hero, killed everything that stepped in his path. Killed a hundred men who all deserved to die instead of taking the life of one woman who didn't.

Well. Two.

His fist flexed, the leather creaked.

Like this place was any better. Like this _life_ was any better. Laying awake in bed, standing on guard in a dream state. He felt like he was waiting for something that was never going to come; in a lot of ways, he was. Waiting on a bullet that hadn't found him yet, biding his time and standing around blankly, still alive even though he should have _died_ that day. He knew the desert was coming for him, knew better than any how big a debt he had piled up. He owed the desert a dozen deaths, and the desert had only cut two from him so far. One that hadn't deserved to die, and one that hadn't even the chance to try to live. And now he stood and stared at roads to protect a place he no longer cared about, killing those who would do it harm, not really in defense, but just to see a little color against all the gray. Stood and stared and thought about _her_ and waited for his turn.

The door opened behind him and he shifted, listening quietly.

"Boone?" A soft, faintly cracked voice. Cheery, but overly so, like he was hiding something. Cliff.

The sniper didn't answer, just tilted his head further to show that the shopkeeper had his attention. Cliff made his way forward, stopping beside Boone and casting aged eyes out across the horizon, as if he were looking for something. When he didn't immediately state his business, Boone pulled his gaze from the road, peering down at the old man and waiting. Cliff looked up, made eye contact for only a moment, then looked away, shuffling his feet as though he were embarrassed. An annoyance to the sniper, but at least the old man finally started talking.

"Just wanted to know if you needed anythin'. Water or food or somethin'. Bought to close up, thought I'd ask."

Boone pulled his gaze away, wondering secretly if the old man felt guilt for something unspoken. He wondered if he grabbed the man by his collar and held him out over the dinosaur mouth, if maybe then he would know something about that night. If maybe that's what he had to do to get answers. The sniper felt his jaw clench again, then loosen slowly, his rational mind mulling over the consequences of that action. He couldn't just start throwing people out of a dinosaur to find his answers; that would be nothing but looking for blame. Nothing but revenge.

And it couldn't be about revenge. _She_ deserved better than that. She deserved justice.

"No." He stated plainly, his tone even, "I'm fine."

"Alright, Boone. Have a good night ... Take ... Take care of yourself, alright?" Cliff's voice sounded sincerely concerned, and he shuffled his feet slightly as he turned to leave. He paused at the door, and Boone could feel the old man look back at him, hear his weight shift and his clothing rustle. The sniper waited patiently, thinking that maybe this was an attack, that maybe Cliff was going to try and get rid of anyone who even remembered Carla. Or maybe the old man was really concerned about the sniper, about his health, about the cool apathy he had adapted since his wife had disappeared.

Boone couldn't know. Couldn't find the answers. Damn town full of liars.

The door opened and shut, and Cliff was gone, whatever his true motivations for coming up had been. Boone's hand relaxed from a grip he hadn't realized had been so tight on the strap of his rifle, returning his attention to the road. Returning his mind to thoughts he shouldn't be having. He beckoned the Mojave to come for him, to give him the death he deserved, to stop toying with him and be done with it. His eyes scanned for crimson, for flags bearing a bull, for spears and rifles and machetes all poised and aimed for the hole in his heart. Bid his time and held his rifle, sat back on his heels and did _nothing_ because that was all he could do. All he was good for since he lost her.

North. East. South.

Boone stood motionless and waited.

...

The second time she woke, she was almost certain that the first time had been a dream. She was laying on her stomach again - or maybe still - but the pain in her back wasn't an all encompassing, mind numbing thing. It ached, that was certain, and as she shifted her weight she could feel the tightness of what must have been bandages or stitches, but it wasn't near the ferocity she remembered. Summarily she began to think that, perhaps, the first time waking had been a dream, that she hadn't been so terribly wounded, and there hadn't been a pair of people who were surprised that she had awoken at all.

Heavenly popped each eye open in turn, silently surveying a room that was blurry and indistinct without the clarity of her glasses. She pushed herself slowly up on both hands, testing the strength in her arms and finding, surprisingly, that they weren't as sore as she imagined they had to be. Her back was still sending out shocks of pain with every movement she made, but seemed tame in comparison to the agony she could crisply remember. Just the relief that it _wasn't_ so torn apart that she couldn't move made the pain bearable, and so she rose up to a sitting position, kicking her bare feet over the side of the bed.

She felt somewhat dizzy, but much better than what she would assume someone who had made merry sport of death _again_ would feel. She was ravenously hungry, a grinding emptiness in her stomach that reached gnarled fingers up into her throat, making her mouth seem that much more dry. She glanced around, squinting in the dim light, trying to will her eyesight to be better than it actually was. The room she was in was unfamiliar, the bed she lay on a stranger's, and the last memories she possessed set her mind racing to the question of how she was alive at all.

And why she was in her underwear.

The room was dark and windowless, looking small and cramped from the amount of furniture it housed. Bunk beds were pushed against each wall, all with footlockers at their feet, and a small table sat in the center of the room with two chairs crammed underneath it. It seemed like someone was making the most out of a building that had been built with some other purpose in mind, but what either the builder or the current resident used it for was beyond her. It was unmistakably old; the dry wall was chipping away in large, uneven bare spots, revealing the splintered wooden frame underneath. The beds were all bare, save for an off white blanket folded neatly atop each, the perfect corners and placement striking her as militaristic. There was a single door, left open, to her left, and as her gaze departed that and moved to the right she noticed she was not alone.

A man stood, staring at her. And she wasn't wearing any clothing.

"Um." She started brightly, tapping fingers on her knees, "Hi."

The man, who most definitely _was_ clothed in something drab and olive colored but whose details escaped her, responded, "Hi." In much the same tone of confusion she had used.

"So, I'm, um ..." Heavenly may have seemed at a loss, and if that was what he assumed, it was more or less an accurate interpretation, "I'm in my underwear."

"No, you're not." He replied, without even pausing to consider. Heavenly blinked dumbly up at him, even further confused by his straight denial of the particularly obvious. Pursing her lips, she hesitated, opening her mouth to speak, to _assure_ him that, as a Doctor, she was a rather astute judge on the situation.

He spoke again before she could, his words muffled by the tan cloth that covered his face, "Yours weren't salvageable. You're in standard issue NCR trooper undergarments. And we've been waiting for you to wake up." Then he turned to the door, moving out of it and into the room beyond, leaving her sitting perplexed in someone else's underwear.

"Oh." Hev called out to his retreating form, "Well. Um. Thanks for ... For clearing that up for me."

A soft whir alerted her to yet another presence in the room, and she turned to the sound, further right at the foot of the bed she sat on. A blurry ball of gray metal and antennae floated nonchalantly in the corner, and even if the details were undefined from her poor vision, Hev felt her heart leap up into her throat at the sight of him. It was either ED or a hallucination, and either way the familiarity of the form in such a strange place was a comfort. He buzzed faintly, a sound that reminded her of those desperate, heated few minutes up on the mountain. The blood and the pain and the light too bright for her consciousness to pierce through it. The sound of crunching metal that she was sure should have been his end.

"Stepinac fixed your eyebot." The voice was female, and familiar. Hers had been the second voice that had penetrated Hev's half asleep mind. Heavenly turned to the door to spot a form leaning against the frame, a wide brim brown hat sitting atop her short red hair. A single dauntless, graceful stride carried her forward, coming to the middle of the small, square room with her arms folded over her chest. She moved with a quiet grace that denoted someone with absolutely no question in their movements; everything about her reeked of confidence, so much that it almost seemed cocky. Not that the young Doctor would say that to her face - she was pretty sure this woman could kick her ass without even meaning to.

Her walk alone belted smugly the truth to Heavenly. Even with her eyesight less than perfect she knew the only sort of person that streamed that strange balance of ego and fearlessness. An NCR Ranger.

She sat before the larger woman with a blank and expectant look on her face, wondering how much longer she was going to wait before receiving an explanation. Or whether or not she would actively have to ask for one. After a second of consideration, the Ranger held forward dark plastic connecting two clear lenses. Hev's eyes widened and she reached forward quickly, taking her glasses with a muttered sound from her throat that she hoped sounded thankful.

"Least we're assuming it's yours. It was near your body. Won't float away from you since he reactivated it, neither. Faithful little fella." She reached into her pocket, pulling out a weathered pack of cigarettes, popping one up and pulling it out with her lips. She offered the pack forward to Hev, who shook her head a bit numbly, still patiently awaiting her explanation. When the Ranger began flicking her thumb over the wheel of a lighter, casually holding tobacco to flame, Hev cleared her throat and tried again.

"So ..." She paused, waiting for the Ranger to take a drag and pull the cigarette from her mouth, "I'm in my underwear?"

"Name's Stella. Ranger Stella if you're into titles. You're sitting in Ranger Station Charlie." She turned and moved to the footlocker at the foot of the bed, flipping it open with a boot and leaning in to pull out a familiar looking leather jacket. She placed her cigarette back in her mouth so both hands could pull out a pair of olive colored canvas pants and an off white tank top, neither of which Hev had ever seen before. Stella tossed it to the bed next to Hev, then reached up to retrieve her cigarette from her lips, smoke escaping as she spoke again, "Your clothes weren't," A pause, a consideration, then, "We threw them out. I was able to scrounge these up, looks like they might work for you. The jacket was in your bag."

Hev reached out, taking the shirt in both hands. It was somewhat stiff and rough, like something that had been rigorously cleaned, "Monroe. How did you ..." Her clothes weren't salvageable. Hev looked up with a new crease in her brow, "Was it bad?"

Stella pulled out a chair from the table in the center of the room, scraping the legs forward until she could swing a leg over it and sit. She took another long drag, her brows going up as she replied, "Didn't think you would pull through that first night. Had one of the boys go fetch a surgeon from Novac. Doc said to keep you on stims, watch for improvement. Guess she knew what she was talking about."

Hev lowered her gaze from the Ranger, nodding to the story. A steady, hourly injection of stims would have accelerated her healing process quite a bit, but measures that drastic spoke volumes on her condition. Volumes, it seemed, that no one else wanted to elaborate fully on. She didn't know what had hit her that day, didn't know how bad it was, and wasn't sure, anymore, that she wanted to know. When she didn't speak, Stella continued, her tone smooth yet gruff, like she was trying to be gentle but was just too much of a hard ass to come across as desired, "Doc said she needed to see you when you wake up. Needs to change the bandages on your back, check for infection. Said if you made it this long, you should be well enough to make it to Novac. An' I think that's where your other robot friend went to, anyways."

Hev looked up quickly as she named the town. If Novac was close, then that meant she had made it. Even if making it had nearly killed her, and all the time she was going to save was spent in a bed recovering. Hev's brow creased, staring blankly up at the Ranger as the weight of it struck her; Checkered Coat would be long gone by now. Out of Nipton and through Novac, too close to Vegas for Hev to dream of catching. There was simply no way that wounds as bad as hers had taken any less than a few days to heal, or at least close enough to make stitches no longer necessary. And if she had been out for that long, that was just one more week that Checkered Coat had on her, one more week he lived thinking she was dead.

She was still staring at Stella like she needed more answers, and after an awkward few moments she realized why, "What other robot?"

Stella had nearly finished her cigarette, but pulled it from her mouth again to answer, her features pulling down into slight confusion, "That cowboy robot. Only reason we found you at all; our patrols don't usually head all the way up to Primm Pass. Came rollin' up to Beaumont and said there was a girl, got hurt by ole Blinky." Stella leaned back, smoke escaping her lips as she searched her memory for something, staring at the bunk above Hev's, "Called itself ... Victor. Weird thing. Had a cowboy face. Really stayed in character, too."

Now _there_ was a coincidence that seemed like anything but. Victor, the same robot that had pulled her from the grave back in Goodsprings, pulls her from certain death yet _again_? Hev had always had a fondness for machines, but she wasn't so naive to think that they could have _any_ sort of fondness back. Robots followed programs, not emotions, and didn't perform an action unless they had been programmed to. Victor wasn't rolling all through the wastes, saving every _other_ poor idiot who stumbled into a bullet or a monster's nest, so why on Earth was he so intent on saving her? Robots were not people, no matter how friendly Victor had been, nor how much he thought himself a cowboy. His behavior was a consequence of programming, and his looking out for her couldn't possibly be a simple coincidence. And even though his actions had saved her life - twice now - she had an inexplicable sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. It seemed the whole world was in on a joke that had flown right over her head.

"Blinky?" Hev pulled from her thoughts and fixed the Ranger with a confused stare, "That thing? You named it Blinky?" Her head tilted, her lip curling back in what might have been the beginning stages of anger or frustration, "You've _named_ it, but you haven't _killed_ it?"

"Miss, no offense." Stella turned, snubbing her cigarette out in an ashtray on the table behind her, "But it's a _deathclaw._ I don't got orders, so I can only take volunteers. Ain't a lot of people who want to go and mess with that. And most folk around here know better than to go off the road, let alone use Primm Pass." She rose to her feet, fixing the girl with a stare and a small smile, "Didn't you see the bones?"

Hev stared up at the Ranger, then conceded with a sigh. She pulled her shirt over her head, trying to avoid stretching her back or testing the comfort of the bandages there. Ranger Stella held her hand forward, helping Hev to her feet and gesturing down to the footlocker. "Rest of your gear is in there. Boys really wanted to keep that launcher you got, but Beaumont shut 'em down. Get yourself situated and meet me outside. I'll give you a point in the right direction."

Heavenly watched her leave, standing half naked and alone in the room, with only her softly buzzing robot to keep her company. Glancing over to said robot, she noticed a new stain spread across the left side of his hull. An ugly brown smattering across the gray of metal, falling in short, uneven parallel lines towards his face plate. Blood that had fallen and dripped along his length, either during the attack or during her frantic run from it. ED carried a stain of her blood, marked from when she had carried him, and she wondered for the first time how it was that he hadn't been crushed like a tin can. She couldn't guess what he was made of, or why he had been made tougher and more durable than the eyebots that came before him.

Maybe he was in cahoots with Victor. Maybe there she had a whole army of robot guardian angels equipped with lasers and good timing. Or maybe whoever had programmed them to protect her had plans for her of their own. Whatever the reasons, she was quickly learning that nothing ever came free out in the wastes. That there was some cost to these deaths she was escaping, and that the bill would soon be coming to her. She didn't know, couldn't know, if this was a cost she could afford, or one she was willing to pay. Or maybe if it all was just one big, happy coincidence.

These questions, Heavenly considered, could probably wait until she had put on pants.


	6. Chapter 6

"I tell you what," The wrinkles around the old man's eyes creased further, the grays of his irises peering out across the desert, "You had best be careful with somethin' that _bloody_ Miss. Lotsa bad happenin's in town, lotsa stuff a little thing like you ought steer clear of." He ran a dirty hand over his equally dirty beard, eyes almost fevered as they flicked across the nothingness of the wastes, nodding in agreement with some notion he hadn't yet given voice to, "Aliens out here. Can smell blood. Sometimes they come down, snatch ya up, put you in a tube, don't age and all frozen. Don't know what for. Don't know if they know what for. Bet you could take over their ship, though, land it out here and make a nice livin' for yourself, sellin' aprons made outta their fleshy stomachs. Gravy'd just bounce right off that."

"Uh, yeah, That sounds ... Sounds like a great idea." Heavenly's eyes were wide and locked on the man, and she was beginning to seriously wonder just what sorts of drugs this 'Doctor' Straus had given her. Though maybe it was more accurate to wonder what sorts of drugs No-bark had been stealing.

"No!" He whirled on her, eyes wide and causing the bodyguards in the tent to sit up a little straighter, "No, no sir, not happening. Don't know if you'd ever make it back. Not a good idea. They too clean, that's the problem. Keep all their lasers off the floor, you know what I mean? Someone who's all clean and no mess - you knows they gotta be hidin' something. Know they ain't all up front." He paused, considering, "You're an alright sort, Missy-"

"- Thank you -"

"An alright sort! Don't even intend to inform your superiors on me or nothin'!" He reiterated, more loudly, to cut off her interruption, "Don't wanna see you end up like some o' the others, come through here. Say that you do - maybe - " He sliced a palm down in front of her, strictly, to illustrate a point, "_Maybe_, get out of the ship. What then! Why, you're living in a nice little starship in the sand, and you become the envy of _all the wrong folk!_ You understand?" He blinked twice, but it was such an emotive blink that it seemed to scrunch up his whole face through the action, almost like a nervous twitch. He fell silent then, and Hev realized he was waiting on her to answer.

So, she did, "Oh, right, like ... Um ... The Legion, yeah? Like-"

"No!" At least, she tried to answer, but he threw up his hands at her attempt, obviously becoming increasingly impatient at her _ineptitude_, "Like the _molerat folk_, Missy! They'll see your nice home, see your nice head of hair, and they'll come up to _snatch you_! Ain't nothin' you can do about it!"

By this point, Heavenly was so utterly perplexed by the man's insanity, that she barely noticed that Straus had resumed removing stitches from her back. Somehow, the crazy old man wasn't distracting _her_ at all - she seemed to be in her own world as she worked. That wasn't to say Heavenly couldn't perform just as adequately - better than, even, she was sure - but it did serve to raise her opinion of the surgeon. Which wasn't saying much, since Hev had originally doubted that she was even an actual Doctor.

"Ain't nothing." No Bark continued, shaking his head and crossing his arms. He seemed harmless enough, and his ramblings had been keeping her mind off the pain in her back. The bodyguards in Doctor Straus' tent seemed passingly accustomed to his presence, even managing a bored yawn when he had approached, where Hev had been certain they would be insistent on tossing him out. Straus herself had been largely ignoring him, and by this point in their conversation, Hev was realizing why; he was only sticking around because the injured girl was _speaking_ to him.

"Only want the pretty ones, too. Molerat men come in, take the girls they want, and jus' ... Jus' leave with them!"

"That's ... That sounds pretty bad, No-Bark." Heavenly murmured, hissing in a breath at the end as Straus pinched at something on her back. Her eyes screwed shut as she felt another stitch being tugged from the wound, but took the moment of silence to mean he was waiting for her response regardless of her pain. "I'll be sure to-" Oh, he wasn't done.

"Tell you what _I _saw, Missy. Tell you what old No-bark seen. Was a dark and stormy night-" No-bark was leaning in conspiratorially, and laying flat on her stomach on an operating table, she didn't have anyway to lean away from him. She could see flecks of food in his beard as he growled lowly to her, obviously diverging some secret that had been _locked tight_ in that insane mind of his.

Or, at least, he would have. "No-bark, goddammit, enough!" Straus straightened, cracking her back as she did so. Her tone was more annoyed than outright angry, but she still gave a firm gesture to the entrance with bloody fingertips, "Why don't you go practice that damned rain dance and leave her alone?" No-bark licked his lips, smoothing both hands back across his hair, and stood still, considering. Wide eyes flicking from the Doctor, to the body guards, to his new friend with the bloody back, he grinned widely, his face somewhere between a leer and a smirk.

And then, just as suddenly, he stabbed a hand outwards, pointing to the black tent wall behind Straus, "Tarnation! What is _that?"_ Heavenly's eyes went a bit wide, and she propped herself up on two elbows to turn and glance back. The other three in the tent simply stared with increasing incredulity at No-bark, the patience in Straus' eyes wearing down to the last imaginable ounce. Hev blinked, and caught herself before stating, obviously, that there was nothing there - and she was glad for it. As she turned back, No-bark was gone, having taking off in a frenzied run from the tent.

"You're all done." Strauss was speaking, without missing a beat, pressing on wide bandages with adhesive corners. They were Pre-war and Hev was familiar with them, but where the wasteland 'Doctor' had gotten them was anyone's guess. She was no less thankful that she had them, however, and she was already pulling her shirt back on as she pushed herself up from the table. Straus' tone was even and apathetic, which only made Hev wonder all over again if she really _was_ a Doctor; real Doctors had a little thing called _compassion_, after all. "You'll need to change those in a few days - and don't strain your back or you'll reopen the gashes."

"I was just humoring him." Hev spoke as she pulled her leather jacket carefully around her wounds, "I .. I knew there wasn't ..."

Straus didn't seem interested in what she was saying, nor if she had anything else to say. She continued, unabated,"If you have me change the bandages I'm going to start charging you. As of right now, the payment the robot gave me has run dry." She was busying herself, putting away her supplies, tucking them into a weathered, brown leather bag with her back to her. Hev placed her hat gently on her head, avoiding a bump on her skull that she hadn't noticed until recently, preparing her muscles as much as she could for the strain of movement. Heavenly pushed herself off the table, cautiously testing the strength of her legs, before reaching back and picking up her bag. She secured it over her shoulders and leaned back for the rifle, speaking offhandedly about the robot - Victor, she assumed.

"You didn't wonder why some robot was giving you money to stitch me up - Or where he got it from?" Hev was barely _surprised_ anymore at the prospect of Victor mysteriously coming to her aid. The initial shock at the Ranger station had given way to a tired acceptance. At least, she considered, she wasn't _dead_. Being dead would certainly put a damper on her budding medical career.

Straus turned to her, shrugging her shoulders, "Nope. Didn't care. He was up front, gave it to me when I got to Charlie and they didn't want to scrounge it up. Nice folk, but kinda stingy, you know? He said he was heading up to Vegas ahead of you - Stella gave you that message, right?" Straus turned back to her, looking at Hev squarely for a few moments. Then, as if she remembered she didn't really _care_ either way, she turned back and continued her chore.

Heavenly felt too exhausted, too dead on her feet, to even consider _Vegas_ and how far off it seemed now. Even if Victor had saved her from certain death, twice, she wasn't sure she wanted to risk anymore time in the Mojave. The road north would be just as hazardous as attempting a return trip home at this point - unless she could tag along on a caravan. The combination of the drugs, and the pain, and the _weariness_ she felt all compiled on her chest, weighing down to the sore muscles of her legs. She desperately wished she could do anything _but_ leave the town. She wished she could climb into a bed and sleep _forever_, and never be disturbed again by shiny coats or heavy chips. Feeling the weight of this on her shoulders, Hev nodded, planning to voice a reply but unable to find the words, and resigning to just a drawn out nod.

It didn't matter; Straus wasn't looking anymore.

Heavenly strode out of the tent, feeling the bandages on her back rustle against her shirt; an unnatural and uncomfortable thing. It was just barely dusk, certainly still too early to consider sleeping, but her exhaustion bid her to do nothing else. ED buzzed as she exited the tent, floating solemnly in his spot right next to the entrance, the same place that she had left him mere hours before. He began moving forward as her steps gained distance from the Doctor's tent, floating merrily, never too far behind.

Her harried steps led her, faster than she realized, to the door of the hotel lobby. Stella had told her that the hotel serviced caravaneers and the like for a somewhat modest fee. At that point, Hev couldn't think of _anything_ more inviting than a dirty mattress and a room that smelled like centuries old mold. She turned the handle and walked, slowly, into the lobby, pushing the door open wide enough that ED could float in before it slipped closed behind them.

She blinked her eyes in the dim light, which admittedly, wasn't too drastic a change from the fading daylight outside. It still took her eyes a moment to adjust, and even before they did, she could hear the rustle of movement coming towards her.

"Well, bless your heart, young lady, you look exhausted!" Her rather astute observer stood before her, barely a head taller than Hev, who was usually at least a couple of feet shorter than everyone she met. On average that must have made her a somewhat short older woman, her hair a faded black with strains of gray running the course of it. Her skin was lighter than most wastelanders, but just as rough and worn, smeared here and there on her hands with dirt - presumably from cleaning. A pair of round wired glasses sat perched on her flat nose, scraggly locks of hair falling loose from the messy bun her hair was pulled into. She brushed off her aged green dress, transferring the broom she held to one hand to reach forward, gesturing Hev to come away from the door frame.

"You'll have to forgive me, dear, doing a little cleaning -" Her hand went to her hair and she seemed absolutely _appalled_ at the fact, "I must look an absolute mess! Just didn't expect you dear - But, oh, mercy, look at me going on and on while you are standing there, dead on your feet!" The click of heels carried her away from Heavenly, working a quick pace towards the desk in the side of the room. She leaned her broom there, digging in the desk noisily for a few moments, "I'm Miss Jeannie May Crawford, young lady, and I'm the proprietor of this fine hotel. I'll have a room key out for you in just a jiffy, and you can head up to take a load off." She looked up, her glasses sliding halfway down her nose as she brought her gaze over Hev's form, "What's a pretty little thing like you doing out here, anyways?"

"I'm ..." Heavenly took a step forward, her eyes going over the hotel lobby as she answered, "I'm on my way to Vegas. I'm a ... I'm a veterinarian." Everything was so _neat_ it would have made her Mother cry tears of joy simply at knowing such a place _existed_ in the world. It made Heavenly a bit uncomfortable, being in such a tidy place, sparking memories of her Mother's clinic and the lectures she would get for playing in it. Luckily, Jeannie May seemed a decent enough sort, and her amicable personality put Hev's discomfort to ease. She brought her eyes back to the woman, who seemed to have found what she was looking for, "I mean, I'm going to be a Doctor. I'm going to open a clinic up there. My name is Doctor Monroe."

"A Doctor!" Jeannie clapped her hands together in front of her, working her way around the desk with a wide grin wrinkling back her face, "Well, you don't say. If that's the case, maybe you should consider staying here with us. Plenty safe, thanks to them sniper boys and the Ranger Station being so close." Her every word was dipped in sugar, her face squinting with her smile that was so _congenial_ it almost made Heavenly feel like a horrible person just for not being her, "You could make a nice little life here, darlin'. And we could certainly _use_ a Doctor." There was the twitch of a slight frown, but it was so incremental that, when paired with her words, almost made her pass as a scowling Grandmother, "Least one with a stitch more talent than that smart mouthed little hussy outside town. Charges a pretty dime, and the things that come out of that girl's mouth! I'l tell you, if she didn't have them body guards-" Jeannie blinked, and her smile returned, a soft, short chortle ending the sentence prematurely. Patting Heavenly's arm, she added softly, "Well, never mind that. Gossip certainly doesn't make friends, now, does it?" She smoothed back some hair, and nodded to the younger woman, "Certainly don't. And anyways, Doctor Monroe, you seem a mite tired. You should go on up and get some sleep. Up the stairs, first door above the lobby." She handed her an old, Pre-war key, silver and small with uneven teeth lining it, her smile unflappable.

Heavenly blinked dumbly down to the key, then looked back up to Jeannie, waiting. When she said nothing, and in fact seemed to be waiting for Hev to take her leave, she finally spoke, "How .. How much? I mean, for the room." Jeannie waved a hand, smiling all the while, "Now don't you worry a bit about that. It's dangerous out there, and you don't look to be in no shape for travel." She began to walk away, back to the desk to retrieve her broom, speaking over her shoulder, "You can stay here while you recover, and, who knows? Maybe our little town will start to grow on you. Maybe you could be a nice little replacement for that brazen smart aleck outside."

She turned back, smiling sweetly to Heavenly, so Motherly and wizened that she found herself actually considering the woman's offer, "You'll do that, for old Jeannie, won't you? Just think about staying? Could be pretty nice here. Could be pretty quiet."

Heavenly found herself smiling back, though not nearly as earnest as the old hotel manager, "Yeah. Yeah, I'll think about it."

"That's a good girl. You have yourself a good rest now."

...

Before she had left the Ranger Station, Stella had walked with her, down those rusted, broken railroad tracks outisde of town. The ancient tracks cut a clear path to the edge of Novac, and on the way, Heavenly was already able to see the iconic green dinosaur, rising on the horizon as some amalgam of Pre-war memories. The heat had been thick and quiet, pressing in against them and causing sweat to sting at the wounds of her back. Stella had taken it slowly for her sake, though she hadn't said anything about it, Hev could tell by the pace she held. Heavenly had kept her head down, squinting at the ground past the bright sunlight.

"Oh. Here." Stella had held her forward something, and Heavenly peered at it for a few moments before realizing it to be a green hat. Taking it, she smoothed back her hair underneath it, laying it gently on her head and discovering a small bump near her temple - another reminder from old Blinky, it seemed. Feeling the rough material the hat was made of, she nearly pulled it back off as she realized what it was.

The Ranger seemed to sense her apprehension, and spoke reassurance over to her without moving her eyes from the road, "It's alright, I got extras. Don't know where you came from that you figured you wouldn't need a _hat_ in the Mojave." Heavenly pressed her lips together stubbornly; she knew where this conversation was headed.

"I know what your going to say," She spoke, her eyes rising to the distance, to the strange silhouette on the horizon, "That I should just go home, right? That I'm not cut out for this."

Stella tossed out a cigarette that Hev hadn't realized she had been smoking, letting out a short laugh, "I wasn't going to say that." She brushed back sweat soaked bangs at her forehead, peering out towards Novac, no longer with the aid of shade from her hat, "Whatever you got to do. Whatever it is you think is so important. I think you should stick to it."

Hev looked over to the taller woman, gazing up at her from underneath the wide brim of the hat. Her reply came out flat and disbelieving, "Really."

"Don't let no one tell you that you can't make it. I'll tell you, I had a whole bunch of guys who laughed when I said I aimed to be a Ranger. Had a whole lot of broken bones and ego and wanted to quit more often than not. But I didn't. I made it. And you can too." Her steps slowed and she stopped, the first squat, boarded up houses of Novac coming into view. It was close enough, closer than Stella had said she'd walk her, and Hev had appreciated every step.

"There's more to the world than just strength. More than one way to make it out here. So, no, I ain't going to tell you to go home. I'm saying you can make it." Stella laughed then, and leather creaked as she folded her arms over her chest, "Hell, if you got enough dumb luck to survive a death claw, what else could get you out here?"

Despite the stinging in her back, Heavenly had found herself smiling, slowly, tipping the brim of the hat down to shade her eyes. Even such small, sparse words of encouragement meant more than the Ranger could have known. Even with, what seemed to be, the entirety of the Wasteland on her heels desperate to kill her, Hev felt the first, small bristles of hope peeking through all the dismay. For the first time since Goodsprings she had felt that she was going to _make_ it to Vegas, the world be damned. She had strode into Novac with those thoughts, optimistic and clear headed and set on her goal.

Yet now, as she laid in what had to be the first clean bed she had encountered since she left home, she felt the desire for that goal ebb and fade. Maybe Jeannie was right - maybe she shouldn't be so concerned with the wasteland, or the far off lights of Vegas. Maybe a calm, settled life was _right there_, waiting for her in Novac. Close enough to Vegas to be starting her own life. Far enough from danger that fear would no longer wake her in the night. Checkered Coat and his allies were already much too far for her to catch them before they reached the city, if they weren't already there.

But these thoughts were half awake musings from a girl who had spent the evening and all of the night in a restless sleep. She knew she wouldn't be able to happily settle in Novac. Something speechless inside her urged her onwards to that glimmering city to the north, something so embedded within her she could not place it's motivations. A thirst for knowledge that she had kindled since childhood played a part of it; she desperately wanted to piece together this mystery. She wanted to know why as much for the logical reasoning as she did for the ethical. And then there was Victor and his mysterious, heroic programming. Leaping to help her just when she needed help the most.

The thought of getting up from the bed, of leaving the town and continuing her way on the road to the north was a daunting thing. Even with the people she had been meeting, she felt as though she hadn't spoken to anyone in days, not anyone who _understood. _Sunny was probably the last one who knew what had happened, and Stella was empathetic to her plight, but they weren't with her now. She felt a horrible loneliness press in on her, imagining that long walk with no one to speak to but a barely functioning eyebot, the wasteland and all it's dangers spread out before them. She imagined the restless nights and pulse quickening battles she would have to endure, alone, and was uncertain she would even be able to weather another one of either.

Tears stung her eyes, but she blinked them sternly away. She was being overly negative, emotional; possibly a side effect of the pain killers she had been given for her back. Regardless of the reasons, she hadn't left home, hadn't gotten so far just to regress back to a little girl and curl up into a ball of self pity.

Decidedly, Heavenly pushed herself out of bed. She wasn't going to mope and whine like some spoiled kid. She had a city to get to, and it certainly wasn't getting any closer. She couldn't necessarily leave the town yet, not with her wounds what they were and her supplies depleted. A walk around, however, would do her some good, after sleeping, or otherwise laying in bed, for close to twelve hours. She carefully pulled her jacket on, releasing only a soft sigh of discomfort as it settled against the bandages under her shirt. She made certain that ED was ready to follow, moving towards the door and nearly forgetting that bringing a _gun_ might be prudent. She didn't move for the grenade launcher, nor her pack, however, as her back could certainly do without the excess weight. She gathered only her nine millimeter, strapping the belt and holster around her waist and exiting the room.

It was early outside, so early it almost seemed to still be night. A light strip of light wrapped around the eastern horizon, turning it a soft yellow that rose into a dim blue. The stars were still blinking faintly in the sky above her, but the coming dawn lent the stairs enough light to guide her steps. The courtyard was filled with the still, hazy dim of dawn, windless and quiet, like the whole world was standing still. Hev breathed deep of the quiet night air, deciding her first steps would be to what anyone would notice first when approaching the town - the large, green dinosaur. Though, all things considered, her options were rather limited. It wasn't as if she could just go from door to door, breaking in to explore the homes out of curiousity.

She stood at the base of the dinosaur and looked up the length of it, tilting her head all the way back to take it all in. She was still behind it, near the tail, and so whatever sign it held in it's tiny hands was lost on her, but she was sure it was something historically relevant for ... Whatever it was. She found herself surprised that it had withstood all the years of weather and warfare in such decent condition. The west coast had been hit so hard in the war that it was a marvel that _anything_ had survived in California. To come such a relatively short distance and find a piece of history so _intact_ made her envious of the desert. Even if California had civilization, most of their buildings had to be built or heavily refurbished. There wasn't much as pristine as this - or for that matter, Vegas.

There was a door on the side, up a short set of rickety old stairs. She wondered briefly if the room beyond the door had been decorated like the _rib cage_ of the mammoth old reptile. This prospect widened her eyes slightly and she found her steps drawn to the door before she was thinking about approaching it. The stairs creaked as she moved up them, and she was hoping and praying that she would be walking into a giant imitation of an ancient thoracic cavity. She was certain that, if she did, she could die a happy girl, having seen the most _incredible_ thing she would ever see in her lifetime.

Stepping inside crushed those hopes, but then, she knew something like that couldn't possibly happen. She stood in what appeared to be a shop - which a sign behind the counter confirmed. It struck her as odd that there was no one manning the counter, or inside the store at all, considering the door had been unlocked. If she was a person with looser morals than what she possessed, she could arguably rob the shop blind without anyone ever knowing. She was better than that, however, and only glanced shortly down at the merchandise as she walked into the small shop, moving around the counter and noticing another staircase leading up. Maybe the shop proprietor was up there - keeping an eye out? She couldn't fathom, but she had little else better to do and her curiosity had been piqued.

She slipped quietly out the door, not holding it open for ED this time - she didn't know if she was even _allowed_ to be where she was. Which, it seemed, was back outside. From the rounded, white plaster teeth that surrounded her on all sides she deduced she was in the dinosaur's mouth. The height allowed her view to spread over the roads out of Novac, all ways but the one she had come from. The yellow band to the east was growing thicker, lighting more and more with each passing moment, heralding a quick sunrise and another hot, Mojave day.

She was so consumed by the view and the sunrise that the man standing with his back to her nearly went unnoticed. Taller than her, and built sturdier than most wastelanders, with his wide shoulders and muscular arms stretching against the plain shirt he wore. A glance to his beret answered that question before it was asked - he was military. Or at least he had been, and paired with the gun it was safe to assume he was one of the snipers that Jeannie had mentioned in passing. He was keeping watch over the roads, which wasn't something she had any right to interrupt with insipid questions about where the store owner was. Besides, she was just as content to gawk like a dumb tourist at the view. She side stepped him quietly, moving to the right to lean over the teeth to gaze out over the land underneath them. Her hands slipped over the chipped paint and she leaned out, looking back west as far as Straus' tent and the farm beyond. It all looked so quiet, and peaceful - so far away from her view from above. It was so tranquil, so still, the edge of dawn spreading out beneath her, safe for now from the day's coming heat. She could almost relax up here.

"Goddammit!"

Almost.

"Ah!" She nearly threw herself _off_ her calm little vista, in a desperate dive from the mouth that, in hindsight, wouldn't have been the sanest of plans. Turning on heel, her heart was pounding as the sniper glared down at her, his eyes tinged with annoyance behind the clear lenses of sunglasses he wore.

"Don't sneak up on me like that!" He sounded outright _accusatory_, and that alone was enough to prickle the back of her neck in aggravation. Here he was - _armed_ and huge in comparison to her, with military training _to boot_, and she was sneaking up on him? He seemed to realize this fact at the same moment that she did, because he paused, looking her over. His features smoothed out into a calm sort of apathy, as if he had reasoned that quickly that she wasn't a threat. She wasn't sure if she should feel relieved or insulted at that insinuation, if it had occurred, and she was sure it had. He spoke again, his fingers loosening from the strap that kept his rifle slung over his shoulder, "You shouldn't be up here. What do you want."

She knew he expected an answer, but it wasn't exactly _stated_ as a question. His words were quick and to the point, giving the impression of someone who couldn't be bothered to give a shit, or take the time to _feel_ silly things like emotions. Heavenly felt like she was trespassing already, and her mouth moved soundlessly as she searched for a reason to why she _was _up there. Her eyes went helplessly out over the view, as if it was going to magically gift her with a relevant excuse. He was acting like she had done something wrong - and she certainly hadn't - and that indignation was all that overcame her flustered mind and bid her to answer. "Well, what, am I not _allowed_ up here?"

"No."

She certainly hadn't been expecting to hear _that_, especially stated so rude and plainly. Just when she thought she may have found a town populated by _nice_ people. He turned away from her, returning his stare back out across the road, as if considering the matter resolved. Heavenly pursed her lips, feeling that same swell of indignation. She wasn't _hurting_ anything, she hadn't _robbed_ the store downstairs, and both the doors had been unlocked at the very peak of dawn. Though, admittedly, he did have a point - she _had_ considered that coming up might have been trespassing, and she had ignored that instinct in favor of curiosity. With a little defeated sigh, she cast one last gaze to the coming dawn, and turned to leave.

"Wait." The word was just as short and to the point as all his others had been, and she heard him turn back to her even with her hand on the door. "You're new here. Maybe ... Maybe you shouldn't leave." She released the knob and turned back to him, her brow furrowing together at his sudden change of heart. And sudden wasn't even a quick enough word to _express_ it - he had literally changed his mind completely in the span of a few seconds. Looking up to him now, she could seen his face pinched together in thought, his eyes far off, staring out towards the west. She could tell he was contemplating something serious, and so she cracked a smile - more bees with honey than vinegar, and all that.

"Oh, I get it. Now you're going to kill me, right?"

He blinked, pulled bodily from whatever thoughts beckoned him on the horizon, bringing his gaze back down to her. It took him a moment for her words to register, and his face remained as impassive as ever as he replied, "Not unless you give me a reason to." His words terse and flat; it gave the impression that it wasn't a threat, but it wasn't simple talk. Heavenly's smile withered away on her face, her weight shifting from one foot to the other uncomfortably. "That was - I mean, I was joking."

"I wasn't." Again it came calm, _nonthreatening_ even, as if he weren't speaking of killing her. Which meant he either had a very strange sense of humor, or none at all, and her money was on the latter. He seemed to get impatient with this line of conversation, though not necessarily _uncomfortable_, as Hev was. He just seemed eager to reach a point - like every one of his sentences. Short, crisp, neutral. _ED_ had more of a personality than the sniper that stood before her.

"It doesn't matter. I need your help. I can pay." He looked back out over the horizon, and for a moment, Hev considered asking him to repeat that sentence. She leaned in slightly, her face falling into utter confusion as she attempted to wrap her mind around that - _he_ needed _her_ help. She desperately prayed he had a brahmin somewhere with a broken leg, because if that wasn't the case, he was shit out of luck. Despite that knowledge, she somehow found her voice, "Um. Okay?"

He nodded, as if agreeing that short sentences were her best option, and she was finally catching on. "It's my wife. Legion slavers came one night, and took her while I was on watch. Came right to our room. Took just the right path. Someone set it up. I don't know who." He paused, and even speaking about something so grim, his voice never changed. It was always level, always even, always as neutral as the features of his face. Heavenly felt a helpless swell of pity in her chest, shaking her head just as he finished speaking. She didn't know what he saw when he looked at her, but there was just no way that she would be able to storm a slave camp and bring back a single woman. She knew he must have just been desperate, somewhere underneath that cold exterior, that he was reaching out for whatever help he could grasp. And it broke her heart to tell him she couldn't help.

"I - I'm sorry. But I'm not ... I mean, I won't be able to find her. Maybe - Maybe I can help you, though, together we could look-"

His brow twitched; impatient, annoyed. Something stirred just behind his eyes, a cold malevolence that brushed the surface before darting away. "My wife is dead." Detachment paired with resolve. Some mixture of emotion, eclipsed as quickly as it dawned. The finality of it, the cold anger, was the first emotion she had seen come out of him. And even it seemed a strange pallor of true emotion - anger without passion, without fury. Something cold and deadly that sent chills up her spine. The brisk way he spoke, the coldness to his tone. It was shocking for her even after only knowing him for all of five minutes, the stark difference to the way he had behaved before. It was like anger, but something else, something altogether more pointed and deadly.

She knew then, at that first meeting, that she stood with the shell of a man. Whittled down to a murderous machination, a mockery of something that once was.

"I want the son of a bitch who sold her."

...

She didn't want to think of it as conspiracy to commit murder.

She didn't want to think on what she had agreed to do. To smile to these people's faces with the intent of sending one of them to their death. This job she had been tasked with strode a fine line between justice and vengeance, and she wasn't sure which side it would fall on in the end. She was half hoping that she would find no evidence to speak of and she'd be able to return to the sniper and honestly say that she couldn't find the culprit. He had said it had been almost a year; who was to say any proof was even left?

But she couldn't help but feel selfish with thoughts like that abounding in her head. Here was a man who had lost so much, and he was reaching out to her for help. Here was a young woman sold to slavery by someone she thought she could trust. If justice was her concern, then where was the justice for Carla? For Boone? For the life they should have been allowed to have? Shouldn't the party responsible face the consequences of their actions?

But did the consequence have to be death? Who was she to decide that?

Hev stood with her back to the door that led to the sniper's nest, clutching the beret in hands that seemed chilled despite the heat of the coming day. The room was still dim below, with no windows opening to daylight, and the musky smell of the store hung heavy, making her wonder how she hadn't noticed it before. She stood motionless and didn't yet dare the trip back to her room - if that was even where she was going. She wasn't looking forward to the day, nor the impression she would be leaving on the people she met.

'Oh, hi, I'm new here. Say, you know what's neat? _Slavery._ Don't suppose you know how I might get involved with that?'

But she had promised to try.

ED floated up to her from the base of the stairs, watching her with that wide, blank face plate. He buzzed faintly, and she nodded to him, her steps falling heavily as she descended back into the gift shop.

"Oh, well, hello there!"

The silence was shattered by the cheery voice of an older man, and the sudden sound in a room she thought to be empty caused her to jump back. She nearly ran into ED, who floated quickly back at her reaction, and she took a moment to slip the beret into a jacket pocket. As she reached the bottom of the stairs, her eyes swept the dim room in search of the speaker.

He sat behind the same counter that had been empty when she had arrived. His dark skin weathered and dry, leading up to a bald head ringed by dark hair. His shirt was faded with age but looked pressed at the edges, crisp as though freshly cleaned. Hazel eyes found hers as she reached the bottom of the stairs, and he rose from his seat and took her hand in both of his, clasping it in a shake, "Welcome to the Dino Bite Gift Shop. You must've come in just before we opened. Well, you're in luck, Miss, because we have a few dinosaurs souvenirs left still. Name's Cliff Briscoe and I sure am glad to be welcoming you to Novac."

Heavenly didn't pull back from the handshake, though his hands were slightly damp with sweat, and she was relieved when it was over with. She wondered how long she would need to wait to wipe her hand off on her pants, in order to not seem rude. Cliff continued, "I know what your thinking." Hev blinked, hoping he didn't really, because then she was going to come off as rude either way. "You rolled into town and straight off started thinking, 'Goodness gracious, where oh where could I get myself one of those great little dinosaurs', right? Well, Miss, look no further! Because right here, right now, I'm having myself a sale on these collectible little critters." He turned away from her, moving back to the counter and scooping one of the green toys off the surface, "For just one cap, you'll always be able to remember your time in Novac! What do you say? Can I interest you in a little T-Rex Dinky of your own?"

Heavenly wiped her hand off on her pants, giving the man a half-hearted smile, "Uh, sure. Why not."

The dinosaur slipped in Cliff's fingers, and he would have dropped it if he hadn't readjusted his grip at the last minute. His face blanched, and his eyes widened, and when he spoke again it wasn't with the same smoothness of his sales pitch, "R-really? Oh, I mean, of course you will! That will just be ... Uh, one cap, Miss." He moved forward with the dinosaur, holding it out to her with both hands.

Heavenly dug in her pocket for a moment, pulling out the cap with one hand and taking the dinosaur with the other. As Cliff received it and moved back to the counter, she looked thoughtfully to the dinosaur and began speaking, "So ... About the guy up there? The sniper, the ... _Morose_ one." She moved over to ED, slipping behind him and opening the panel on the side opposite his face plate; there was, strangely, a wide empty compartment just behind a heavy metal panel. She assumed that it was a space meant for future expansions that had never panned out for the little bot, but she used it mostly to store her extra food and water. And starting now, other miscellaneous junk she was never going to use. She wasn't sure just how much would _fit _in there, but he seemed willing enough to find out.

As she moved, Cliff was speaking, his voice a little less pleasant than before, "Oh. _Boone_." He sighed, circling the counter and coming to a stop at the chair behind it, "Don't take his manners personal, darlin'. He's never been very sociable, is all. Been through a lot, even before poor Carla went missing. And after that, he just kinda ... He just kinda shut down, that's all. Whatever he said to you, I'm sure he didn't mean anything by it."

"Oh, he didn't ... I mean, I was just curious." The panel closed with a soft click of the latch falling back into place, and Hev looked past the robot to the store owner, "So ... Carla, his wife, she, um ..." She had never been a very good liar, and felt incredibly awkward as she tried to casually interrogate the man, "She disappeared? Doesn't anyone know what happened?"

Cliff sank down into his chair, leaning forward and laying a hand on a knee. His eyes darted up to the door behind her, and his voice lowered a bit, as if afraid Boone might overhear them, "Not a soul. One night, 'bout a year ago I'd say, she just ups and disappears. Here one day, happy couple, and the next - nothing." Cliff shook his head, "Damn shame too. Boone used to come in once a week to buy food and such for her, now I barely see him - shopping, anyways." It took Hev a moment to realize that he was mourning the lose of a _customer_, and her brow furrowed at the thought. It seemed a little avaricious, but she supposed it was as good as any reason to miss someone. At least he wasn't making up some story about how good of friends they had been. She moved around the eyebot and continued the conversation, trying again to appear casual, "But no one saw what happened? No one saw her leave? Or anyone leave with her?"

Cliff fixed her with a stare that made her fear that the charade wasn't working as she'd have liked it to. She thought she might try leaning against the counter or toying with one of the T-rex dolls, do something with her hands to appear less focused on the conversation. But then, deception wasn't Hev's game, and she couldn't think of any act that she wouldn't clumsily screw up. Cliff spoke again, and his tone was soft and even as before, "If you're worried about it, you shouldn't be. Hasn't happened since then, I'm sure the town is safe. Jeannie May is convinced the girl just decided she was tired of this little town. Took off to the city." Cliff rubbed the back of his neck, leaning back in his chair, "Hell, I'm almost inclined to agree with her. Boone sure won't talk about it. Askin' about Carla just gets you a mean glare. Hell, I thought he was going to punch poor old No-bark's lights out when he ran up to him and said he'd seen what happened. So who's to say she didn't just leave him?" Cliff looked off, over the heads of his dinosaurs, seeming to consider something else with a slight shrug, "Though, they did seem happy enough. I don't know." Waving his hand off, he looked back up to her with a smile, "But it ain't nothin' you should be worrying about, darlin'. Novac is pretty safe as far as the Mojave goes."

Hev looked up from the dinosaurs, her bangs obscuring her vision as her sight sought Cliff again, "He said ..." Then the name struck a memory in her mind and her face pinched together in realization, "No-bark? The crazy guy? _He_ saw what happened?"

Cliff laughed softly, his eyes traveling back to the closed door at the top of the stairs, "No-bark's _'seen'_ a lot of things, Miss. Among them a magic, talking flower pot, a chupacabre with a machine gun, and a molerat he says tells him how it's gonna take over the world with an army of ghouls. I wouldn't be taking anything No-bark says to heart, there, Miss."

"Yeah." And that was a completely reasonable argument, which she logically agreed with. After having met No-bark, and been on the receiving end of a double dose of his bat shit meanderings, it seemed like she could count him out as a credible witness. "Thanks, Cliff."

"No problem, darlin'. You come back now, alright? Specially if you decide that little guy needs a friend." It took her a moment to realize he was refering to the T-Rex. She gave him a polite smile and exited the store, enjoying the sudden fresh air that hit her face. She hadn't realized how hot and musty the old store was, not until she stood once more in the open air. It was still early morning, but the sun was lighting the courtyard dimly now, and the stars above her had all but disappeared. Heavenly looked to the set of cabins that sat opposite the hotel's main building, glancing from door to door as she considered what to do next. She had the entire day to search; Boone's shift would be ending soon, and he wouldn't be back in the perch until night had fallen again. She started down the steps, feeling little licks of pain scratch at her back as she descended.

She found herself wondering why, exactly, she was even bothering with this errand. He had said he would pay her, but that seemed like little more than a side bonus. She wanted to believe she was helping a man find justice for his stolen life, but the problem with that was that she still wasn't sure if murder would equal justice. In her heart, she felt like it hadn't been his situation, it had just been _him._ He seemed so empty, so jaded. Something about the way his eyes drifted lifelessly until they filled with the carnal _need_ for revenge, and all the contempt that held. She didn't want to draw comparisons between them, but to her, it almost seemed like they _were_ alike. Two dead people, still walking around.

Though death had left _her _with a sense of _humor_, at least.

And she also appreciated that he was so straight forward - even if his stoicism would have gotten very old, very fast had she spent more than a few minutes with him. His words were sharp, and carefully chosen, but she didn't see any real malice or dishonesty in them. He seemed a little unhinged, damaged, and maybe that was _why_ he had no reason to mince words. Maybe it was only the crazy people who really had the freedom to be totally honest.

And if that held true, then being crazy meant that No-bark, as well, had no reason to lie to her. Being out of his mind gave him a sort of innocence compared to the rest of the denizens of Novac; he wouldn't be telling her something with an ulterior motive. Even if it was utterly insane and made no sense, it would be true to _him_, and that, she thought, was better than being lied to. And it was this backwards logic that she followed as she started to move. Or maybe it was just that she found herself standing still for too long a time, and heeded the urge to get started towards _something_. Even if she wasn't moving to any sort of conclusion, it was better than standing around looking lost.

No-bark had a shack on the edge of town; she had seen him in front of it when she had been on her way to the Doctor. She headed in that direction, walking quicker than she probably should have been. Her back stung when her boot hit pavement and sand alike, though she strived to aim for the level path. ED floated happily along behind her, and Hev half tilted her head back to him.

"Don't even say it. I know." She sighed, resting a hand on her gun, "But, logically, he would have been the only one awake, right? I mean, unless everyone else is lying." She inhaled a short, snorted laugh, "And how could at least _someone_ not be lying? A woman gets taken from the middle of a gated community, and no one sees _anything_?" ED whirred softly, and Hev put a hand up to dismiss the interjection, "Don't give me that. I don't _have_ anything else to do. I can't go get lost in the middle of the desert with no one to change my bandages, end up with some pathogenic bacteria _colonizing_ all over my back. I'm not like you, ED. I can't just get it replaced."

She glanced down both ends of the road as she reached the gate of Novac. ED floated up silently behind her. "And I want to help him, you know? He might be a nice guy, you know, once you get past all the ... _not_ being nice." She started down the road, heading in the direction of the lines of houses beyond the garage, "So I'm going to speak to the most logical witness - the only one who _definitely_ didn't do it. The only one who has nothing to hide."

She almost had herself convinced. And then she found No-bark, wearing a head fashioned out of an old mannequin and a belt, crawling on his hands and knees behind the back wall of the hotel. Hev pressed her lips together, then shot a glance at ED to silence any smart comment he might want to make - were he to choose this moment to start making comments. Running a hand over her face, exasperated, she gathered what courage she had and took another step forward, into the shade the hotel offered. No-bark tilted his head up to her, sitting back on his haunches, but not getting up.

"What ... What are you doing?" Hev's voice had drained of amusement. She suddenly felt very tired,

"Sssh!" He rose one finger to his lips, and simultaneously pressed one to the lips of the mannequin on his head. His eyes darted around, and then waved her down, his voice hushed, "Step into my office."

Heavenly looked right and left, vaguely wondering what the hell sort of backwards logic had led her to think _this_ was an admissible lead. With a heavy sigh, she gingerly leaned down onto her knees, trying to move her back as little as possible in the act. Her look of vexation was lost on the crazy man, who only nodded sagely to her as she came to his level. After he remained silent for a moment more, words curled her lips, but her throat was only able to groan the first syllable before he shushed her again.

Leaning in, he spoke in a whisper, "Can't have you ruining my disguise. Trickin' the chupacabre, you see. Makin' sure he don't move from brahmin to _people_. Doin' what I can to protect the town." He paused and looked off, over her shoulder, his eyes moving fast enough to suggest he ad caught sight of something. Shaking his head dismissively, he looked back to her, "Whatcha need, Missy? Make it quick, I can't be seen speakin' to crazy folk like you. Can't make myself a target."

Hev blinked, and found herself whispering despite knowing there really wasn't a need to. Whispers were contagious like that. "Wait, _I'm_ crazy?" She made a point to glance up at his mannequin hat, then back to him, "_Me?_"

No-bark fixed her with a look, one he didn't break away from as he pointed to her robot, "You know that thing don't talk back, right?"

Hev looked over her shoulder to ED, feeling her lower lip pout somewhat. Arching an eyebrow back to the man with a wooden woman's neck strapped to his head, she managed a shrug, "Fair enough."

"Well, then, you realize this has to be quick." He spun around to look over his shoulder, nearly losing his hat as he did so. His hand sprang up and held it steady, muttering softly to himself as he turned back to her.

Heavenly _didn't_ make it quick, because she knew she was going to regret her next words. She sat in the sand and looked out over the landscape, deep furrows lining her brow. She needed to speak before she could persuade herself out of it; she needed to get this over with.

"Tell me about the things you've seen, No-bark."


	7. Chapter 7

For all her wanton fantasies, Heavenly didn't _like_ to break the law. One might counter that, with the entropic temperament of the wastes, there couldn't be such a thing as standardized law. That the inherent anarchy that surrounded her would authorize her to act and react in whatever way was necessary for survival. She would inevitably counter that the law, to an individual, would have to be something that was carried with each person. One living with a distinguished set of morals and standards would be leaps and bounds ahead of the other savages that plagued the Mojave, just by adding personal _rules_ while the rest of the world lived through instinct alone. She liked to think of herself as such; someone more evolved than the ruffians and raiders she encountered, a thinking woman who would hold herself at least a single peg higher on the grand hierarchy of morality. She had spent more than one night laying awake, staring at the ceiling of whatever shelter she had found, reasoning out the best ways to fix the wasteland. And that had been the conclusion she had drawn; it began with each person separately. One by one people had to decide to begin being more decent to one another - man looking at man and inquiring if they could help one another in some way, instead of instantly wondering if the opposite had anything valuable that could be looted off their _corpse._

And Heavenly had always looked down on that behavior. That savage, brutal antagonism that men carried in their hearts as easily as the rifles on their backs. If the NCR was serving nothing else, they were at least imposing nominal order over utter chaos - and from those roots true law could one day blossom. Hev, for her part, carried with her the morality her Father had taught her, and felt a sort of borderline snobbery about that fact. It was, after all, so easy for the righteous to look down upon the wicked.

And then she broke into an old lady's house and stole her keys.

Sand crunched noisily under Heavenly's boots as she sped down the cracked asphalt of Novac's main road, her eyes buggy and wide with paranoia, and a bit of incredulity. Her heart was hammering in her chest and her mind flickered the mental image of some sort of horrible karmic incarnation of _law_. Something that would appear in a puff of smoke in front of her and call her a fraud on all she believed in. Her thoughts prattling on about how the door had been _open_ and that sort of thing was just plain _stupid_ out in the wastes, and if the woman had taken the time to _lock_ the door before she went to bed, then Hev wouldn't have been able to pilfer her keyring. The keys themselves had been sitting on an end table not far from the slumbering Jeannie May, and Hev's soft steps hadn't even caused a rustle of movement from the woman. It had all been so terribly _easy_, a fact that should have made Hev feel better, but it only resulted in her feeling _worse._

And she hadn't even stopped to _think_ about what she was going to do if she was _wrong_ about all this, as she prayed she was. As every logical murmur of thought in her mind told her she had to be. Happy, friendly little Jeannie May Crawford, entertaining Legion slave traders? 'Oh, why, hello there dearies, allow me to put down my stitching needles and sell an innocent woman into a life of torment and servitude. Would anyone like some tea while you wait for her to be dragged, screaming from her home?' The very thought of it all was so utterly _ridiculous_ that Heavenly had turned and started walking back to her room three times before she even made it to Jeannie's front door.

Initially she had only planned on speaking to the woman, but she hadn't realized how long she had spent in No Bark's little hut of crazy, how long she had wasted time in the lobby and her room, nor how long the sun had been down. It had been midday when she entered the hut, and had to sit through various theories and stories before he even muttered anything _helpful_, and even that was barely a nudge in the right direction. When she had returned to the lobby to talk to Jeannie, the woman was speaking to some older man with a limp in a Ranger's uniform. Hev had taken a look around the lobby and found nothing - save for the sight of a safe embedded in the floor behind the front desk - but had been dragged into introductions and light conversation with the former Ranger.

And Jeannie had been so _nice_. And _helpful._ And had theorized that Carla had run off for the city and that Heavenly was sweet to worry about people she had just met. She had given the girl a snack cake and told her to go lay down. Told her that she needed time to rest up her wounds and to keep thinking about staying on in town because Hev was such a _keeper_. That maybe she should try to befriend Boone and put some of his worries to rest. That she was such a _pretty _young thing and a young man would certainly appreciate her company every now and then, if only to talk and forget a bit about the past.

So Heavenly ate the cake, took a nap, and then crept into Jeannie's house and _stole_ from her.

Such a _keeper_.

It was actually quite fortuitous that she _hadn't_ gotten the chance to speak with Jeannie about the Legionaries that visited her hotel. What a conversation _that_ would have been. Heavenly could almost hear the unsubtle hints and winks she would be tossing the woman's perplexed expression. She could almost see Jeannie's calm, worried reaction, hear her asking just what sorts of drugs Heavenly was taking for the pain in her back. Hev was beginning to realize she was much better with animals than she was with people.

Heavenly's hands were shaking, rattling the keys as she tried to find which one fit into the lobby's door. ED whirred softly behind her and nearly caused her to drop the whole ring to the ground. She turned and cast him a dubious glare before returning to her _crime._ After several unsuccessful attempts with the wrong key, the correct one finally slid inwards and turned fluidly, releasing the lock with a soft click and allowing the handle a clockwise rotation that granted her entry.

And the room that she stepped into was so _empty_ and dark and seemed to reek with the accusations of how much she _wasn't_ supposed to be there that she nearly turned on heel and fled back to her room. She held the door open long enough for ED to float casually in, and, not for the first time, she envied the fundamental placidity that robots were granted. With no emotions, with no coding within him to emulate them, he didn't realize that he wasn't supposed to be where he now floated. Heavenly couldn't bring herself to forget it.

"It's alright," She whispered to ED, though she wasn't sure why she felt the need to whisper; the only one watching the town this late at night was the same broken man who had sent her on this little errand. No one lived nor slept near enough the lobby to hear her - but she continued whispering anyways, "I'm _just_ going to _look_ in the safe. It's not like I'm stealing anything. Just _look_."

The unspoken question that the robot couldn't possibly have the capacity to ask was what, exactly, she was looking for. And if some strange miracle of coincidence occurred and ED _found_ the capacity to ask that question, Heavenly wasn't sure how she would respond. At the heart of this, she didn't rightly _know_ what she was looking for. The majority of her mind thought she was acting like a callous, law breaking sociopath. That she had _preyed_ on an old woman's trust and betrayed the immeasurable kindness and hospitality that she had offered.

There was something else though. Something that edged and fluttered in her mind like a truth half ignored. Some realization that she was purposefully avoiding, _denying_, and yet had believed just enough to have found herself standing in the lobby of the hotel. Logic, in all it's cold glory, had led her steps back here with stolen keys in pocket, seeking an answer she believed couldn't be found through honest endeavors. The thoughts of this were all that kept her from exiting the very empty room - her denial was based in optimism, in _hope_, that there weren't people like that in the world. Her suspicion was based in _fact. _The fact that she had already seen such evils first hand, as much as she struggled to forget them.

But fact had to rise above hope, as surely as order had to rise above chaos.

Heavenly knelt by the safe, grunting softly to the protest in her back, and looking up as ED hovered over her shoulder. She frowned, glancing to the door, feeling the familiar tug of paranoia at her senses. Crouching over a safe with a stolen set of keys wasn't easily explained, especially for someone new to town. She realized then that she _probably _should have locked the door behind her, and that she was very, very terrible at _crime_.

Best to just be done with it then, she considered.

...

Jeannie May Crawford lay sleeping soundly on the nearly spotless sheets of her bed. Her house was clean and neat, the kitchen stocked with food and water, little decorations spotting her living room, and a pair of wire frame glasses sitting on a nightstand near the bed. Her graying hair was untied and falling in thin, wispy strands around her aged face, wrinkles folded into the skin from the wide, gentle smile Hev had seen her wear. She had fallen asleep in the same dress she had worn that day in the hotel, a brown and crisp thing, cleaned roughly and pressed at the corners, as if enough scrubbing could remove all the damage mere age had inflicted. She slept serenly, the rhythmic rising and falling of her chest soft and undisturbed, bathed in what little light the moon peeked in through the curtains. She slumbered deeply and peacefully, basked in pale light and safe from the violence of the world outside.

And it took every ounce of will Heavenly possessed to not pull her handgun and shove it in the old woman's mouth.

There had been trepidation, at least, back in the lobby. A terrible few minutes that she found only hotel and guest information, payment receipts for room and furniture and agreements with caravans. She had sat there dumbly and thumbed through the records, feeling her face heat with embarrassment and guilt. She had been ready to give up and announce to ED that Carla _had_ run off to New Vegas, and if she could, she would try to ease that information on the sniper. She had just pressed back something regarding the shipment of water from a dealer in the Hub, when a single word caught her eye on a piece of paper. It wasn't the word itself but the _language_ it was in. _Officiorum_. Latin. And a befuddled few seconds passed in the back of her mind as she tried to reason, vaguely, what caravaneer would be writing in Latin.

Something cold pressed, hard and sharp, into Hev's gut.

And then she _read_ it.

And then she had pushed back and away from the safe, scooting back without rising until she felt the counter behind her press painfully into her back. And she had relished the pain, if only because it pulled her mind from the numbing certainty that spread like a fire within her. Tears welled and dropped heavily from her eyes, one hand raising to cover her mouth in the sheer shock of it all.

The other hand curled around her gun.

_... pending successful maturation of the _fetus_ ..._

Her hand remained fastened to her gun all the way back to Jeannie's home, her eyes puffy and red from the tears she had barely been able to pull under control. She could barely comprehend the magnitude of cruelty that resided in the woman's heart, what cold indifference dictated that her actions would be permissable. Her fingers twitched as she watched the woman sleep, standing at the end of her bed and trying her damnedest to not add another sin to this tragedy.

... _full power to bargain and sell said _slave_ and her _offspring_ ..._

Unbidden, her hand pulled the gun free. Heavenly stared numbly at Jeannie May, the horrible silence of the room buzzing in her ears. Her eyes felt hot and moist, as if she were ready to cry again at any moment, as if she still had the strength to cry. She stood motionless, her hand gripping her pistol so tightly her knuckles had long gone white. The emotions that raged within her were the likes of nothing she had ever felt before; she wanted to _kill_ this woman. She didn't want to fight her, or reason with her, imprison nor punish her. She wanted to _kill_ her, in cold blood, as she slept. Demolish her face with a single shard of hot metal and a single pop of light in the darkness.

Heavenly wasn't so _utterly_ naive that she had never seen evil. She had lived her whole life in California; she had heard the stories of slave rings in the Den, forced prostitution in Reno. She had long been warned of the evils of the wasteland, of the darkness that awaited her, spread out in pockets across a sun bleached desert. She _knew_ there was wickedness out there, she had just never imagined it to look so docile and tamed.

It was the note, she reasoned. The note that was so calm, so _professional_. She had imagined mankind to be evil only when they failed to be educated in any other way. She had thought that it was survival that infected madness, stupidity or desperation that spurred it's works. Evil could be cured with enlightenment, with knowledge and security - that if people were shown there was another way to survive, were taught to be better, they could inevitably endeavor to be so. In that spirit, perhaps it wasn't even Jeannie May herself that had affected Hev in such a way. Perhaps it was the entirety of the Legion and everything they seemed to represent. Hev imagined them as savages, barbaric tribes that had banded together, doing what they thought was necessary to survive. Giving little _thought_ to what they had to do, to ensure their longevity.

But the note spoke differently.

It was her first glance of the Legion, her first window that spied into the heart of true evil. These were not barbarians. These were men who could think. These were men who truly _believed_ that what they did was right, was justified. Not because they thought they _had_ to; because that was their _law_. Their form of order over chaos.

And bringing all this into bright, harsh perspective was Jeannie May Crawford. A woman who kept her hotel neat, was kind to visitors, washed her clothes and hair, spoke well of her many friends, and had sold a pregnant woman into slavery. A pretty young wife whom she had known, whose husband protected the very town she professed to care so deeply for. A man now broken by the parts of himself that had been ripped away by others.

It was only the thought of Boone that brought her to holster her gun. That would be Hev's sin, were she to commit it; she could not take his vengeance from him. As much as she wanted to correct this transgression with her own hands, she knew she hadn't the right to. She felt guilt that this seemed a matter of convenience for her conscience, guilt upon guilt for never having wanted to _kill_ someone at all, let alone so badly. A mere month ago, the very thought of her, of _Heavenly Monroe_, killing anyone, let alone a middle aged sleeping woman, would have incited a rush of disbelief. She felt as though a different person had awoken in that Doctor's office. That a different person had crawled from that shallow grave. That the life she had led was nothing more than a comatose fantasy that had fled as quickly as it had been conjured. The girl who had excelled at correcting bovine delivery complications could not possibly be, or even resemble, the girl who now stood, longing to end a woman's life.

Heavenly, somehow, was able to pull her hand from the gun. Her voice, when she finally came to speak, was more calm and even than she had imagined it would be.

"Jeannie." Too soft, the first time. She tried again with added volume, "Jeannie." It was still calm, precise, striking each syllable with the same cold precision the sniper outside used. She barely recognized her own voice.

The older woman stirred at the second beckoning, aged creases in her face cinching together as she woke. Her eyes slowly opened, blinking in the dim light of the home and pushing herself to sit. She scanned the room dumbly for a few moments, finally bringing her eyes to Hev's shadow, one hand snaking over to blindly search for her glasses. Finding them and placing them neatly on her nose, her aged features finally came to focus on Heavenly, pinched in confusion and a hint of annoyance.

She felt the urge, once more denied, to put a bullet in her skull and walk calmly from the house. Riding on the wake of the longing was the guilt of implications, of being so far from who she thought she was. Of wanting so badly to end a life and feeling no nudge of conscience to talk her away from it. The only thing that stayed her hand was the man who waited on his perch, lost in the memories of the life he lost.

"Dr. Monroe?" Jeannie kicked her feet over the side of the bed, pushing fingers up underneath her glasses to rub the sleep from her eyes, "Is something ... What is it, dear? It's awful late for me to be having visitors."

She wanted to scream at her. She wanted to tell her she _knew_, she had _proof_, she had found out what a monster she was. She knew what she had done, had uncovered the lies she had told. Heavenly stood still and silent for too long, staring at the woman and training her expression into neutrality. Jeannie's brow furrowed and she seemed ready to speak again, and so Hev finally found her voice, even and soft in the darkness, "Cliff sent me to get you." Heavenly's hand still rested on her gun, but she couldn't bring herself to move from it, "He needs your help with something, out in front of town. I didn't ask what."

Jeannie stared at her for several long seconds, and if Heavenly hadn't been fighting herself to just not _shoot_ the woman, she may have been worried. She wasn't a very skilled liar, that was certain, and if Jeannie wouldn't come with her, then she wasn't quite sure what she could do. Force her? March an old woman out of her home at gunpoint, just to be shot like a dog at the edge of the hotel she worked so hard in? Heavenly's voice was even and tired enough, it seemed, that Jeannie didn't care to question that the matter was serious. She pushed herself to her bare feet, crossing the room to gather her heels at the side of the door. Hev watched her, calmly, coldly, feeling nothing where her morality should have been protesting.

"Well, then, of course dear. Thank you for coming to me. Cliff does work hard in his shop, and I wish he would ask for some assistance more often. A town can't _do_ without a suitable shop, you know?" Jeannie strapped on her heels and Hev felt her teeth grit together. She turned before the woman had finished pulling on her shoes, moving out of the house and into the cool air outside the house.

ED waited for her just outside the door, floating silent and morose as if he, too, could comprehend the grimness of the situation. As justifiable as she found it, the repercussions of the act hadn't changed - she was taking a woman to her _death_ - only her apprehension to performing it had. The old woman who had given a wounded stranger a safe place to rest, free of charge, was only going to be living for a few more minutes. Even though Heavenly wasn't the one who would be firing the gun, she was no less to blame for the death. If not for her, Jeannie May would live to wake up with the sun, clean her hotel, chat pleasantly with her neighbors, and go back to sleep the next night in her little house. All her fears and memories and loves and joys were going to be ended, forever. And Heavenly was to blame.

And she couldn't bring herself to _care._

They marched down the road towards the dinosaur, towards the execution she didn't know was waiting. Hev wanted to believe it was justified; that this, too, was some outlandish deliberation of law. That punishing this woman for the crime she had most certainly committed was order prevailing over chaos, and Hev was doing nothing more than her moral _duty_ by ensuring that she wouldn't commit such an atrocity again. But with that came questions - what about redemption? Atonement? Forgiveness? Did punishment have to mean death? How could Boone make an unbiased decisions on the matter, when he was so emotionally attached to the outcome?

Try as she might, she still couldn't convince herself to _care_. Could no longer imagine Jeannie as anything more than a monster. With that came something that startled Heavenly more than her withering compassion; impassive disregard for the life that was about to be cut off.

Heavenly's hand lowered to her jacket pocket, to the beret that rested within.

Soon.

...

He didn't want to admit it to himself, but he _had_ been waiting on her. The last fringed edges of hope that had stepped away from the perch, riding precariously on the shoulders of a girl he had just met. A small and unimposing figure, looking to be younger than he was - more so in some ways than others. He recognized her type from his days in the military; NCR civilian, someone out of place in any place other than the Republic itself, reinforced by the fresh pink scar on her forehead. She certainly didn't look like someone who could get any rough job done, let alone the job _he_ had given her, but her ability hadn't had much to do with why he had chosen to speak with her, and only her, about Carla's disappearance.

It was because she was an innocent. Naive. Untested in the wastes. He supposed in another time he would have felt guilty about using her for those traits, but the man who would have felt that had died along with his wife and child. He had assumed her to be trustworthy for all the same reasons she would have looked an easy target to anyone else. The fact he had capitalized on that made him no better than whoever it had been that had left that scar on her head.

So he hadn't hoped that she would actually turn up results on the search that had frustrated him. At most he hoped that someone would slip, give her some portion of truth that had been hidden from him, and he would have been able to pair it with what he already knew to deduce what had happened that night. He stood watch still with the same impassive apathy, only now paired with a sensation tingling at the back of his neck. Something he had long since forgotten the feeling of. Something he wished he could rid himself of.

Hope.

It was better to just assume she would fail than to bear with defeat when she returned to him with nothing. At least with the former he was no better off than he had been before her arrival. He also doubted that, even if her search produced results, it would be as _soon_ as the very next night. Try as he might to forget about it, he found his gaze deviating from the horizon, falling on the road and the rocky hills just in front of the dinosaur. It didn't seem hope was content to simply pester his mind; it had to distract him from his duties as well.

He had almost convinced himself to give up on the fool notion of her quick return when movement below him caught his attention. Immediately, on instinct, his rifle was unslung and pressed against his shoulder, held with the barrel down as he leaned over white plaster teeth to look at who was approaching. They came in from the west, a pair of women, the second more easily recognized as Jeannie May. The first, the one in the lead, was shorter and fair haired, too frail looking to be anyone but the girl he had met yesterday. His eyes narrowed at their approach, not yet rising his scope, waiting for her to use their signal. He had to be sure.

Looking now down to Jeannie May, his mind was once again moving, pieces sliding into place as he stared down at the slow progress the pair made. Jeannie May, who had always offered a smile and a helpful hand when Boone and Carla had been settling in. Jeannie May, who, along with Manny, had been the only other person in the town whom had known about Carla's pregnancy. Boone had gone to her to ask if _she_ had ever been pregnant before, being understandably worried about his young wife's health. Jeannie May who had seemed so excited at the prospect of a child in the town, who had congratulated them both, who had promised her help with caring for the babe.

Jeannie May who had never presented anything but friendship and courtesy, even when Carla was being ... Less than polite. When Monroe reached into her pocket, he saw a sliver of red in her hand, moving slowly to place the beret on her head. Boone felt like his head may have caved in at that very moment, like rage and depression intertwined could penetrate the very fabric of his mind and destroy him before he could give his lost family justice.

It had been _her_. All this time. All the kind words and the comfort she had offered. All the false smiles and friendly gestures. All this time she had known, she had been laughing at him, sitting in her comfy little lobby and counting the money his wife's _life_ had gained her.

The rage dissipated as quickly as it had come, as all emotions seemed to since that day. And as always, the only resonance left in it's wake was cool resolve, the actions carrying through with thoughts that lacked emotions to guide them. He raised the scope and stared down at the confused expression on Jeannie's face, stared at her the same as he had at the woman he loved. Too far away then, and helpless to change fate even now, helpless to undo all the wrong he had done, to deserve the life that his wife and child had represented.

Through the scope, he didn't see Jeannie.

He saw _her_. He saw her smile, and her laugh. He saw her incessant chatter and the look she got in her eyes when talking about something that interested her. He saw the pout that tugged at her bottom lip when she didn't get her way. He saw the dark ringlets of her hair parting as he ran his fingers through them, saw the clarity of her light eyes finding his. He saw the wrinkles that would appear in her forehead when he did something she didn't like, saw the twitch of her eyebrow when he angered her.

And when all that faded as it inevitably did, fell back into recesses he wished he could forget, he saw the reality of what he had seen that day. He saw her beautiful face broken and bruised, saw her hair hanging clumped around her tear stained face. He saw the rips in her dress and the soft bulge of her stomach. He saw her gorgeous eyes stained red, mascara smeared in ugly blobs around them, tears that held no shine still leaking down her olive cheeks. He once again felt the swell of misery he had felt that day, of helplessness, of utter despair at seeing something so beautiful to have become so broken.

He had wanted to protect her from all of that. He had thought he could. He had thought the desert had forgiven him, that the lives he took would rest easy and he could move on. She made him forget, and so he had.

And she had died for his mistake.

Boone's finger squeezed the trigger back, a soft pop echoing across the Mojave.

For the second time in his life, Craig Boone killed his wife.

...

Her back hurt.

Even laying on her stomach didn't fully assuage the pressure she felt on it, pounding across her spine and her shoulder blades. Her throat and eyes burned, and she felt like she should have been crying, though she felt no urge to. She stared at the window that, if not boarded up, would have given her a view of the walkway outside her room, and the courtyard beyond that. She couldn't tell anymore if it was very late or very early, and didn't know if she had truly fallen asleep or had just been laying blankly for hours. She thought she _had _slept, and that it was time for another stimpack to be shoved into her aching arm, if the pain in her back was any indication. She briefly mused that putting some sort of clock on ED would be beneficial; the bot was the only thing she could make out in the dim room.

More than the fact her glasses sat on an end table near the door, she wasn't _really_ in the room. In her mind, she was still standing in front of that dinosaur, sentencing a woman to death with her actions.

Jeannie May had looked up just as Hev had placed the beret on her head. A momentary confusion had passed her features, her voice softly inquiring where Cliff was. Hev had pulled her gaze away then, feeling very plainly the lack of compassion in her chest, not responding when the woman called her name again, this time her tone laced with fear. She understood then, Hev imagined, realized that her sins had caught up to her. She hadn't spoken again, but Hev heard her heel shift against the sand, as if she were going to try to run, as if she stood a chance against a vengeful man and his high powered rifle.

"She was pregnant." Hev had whispered, dryly, and it was all the sound she could bear to make. Her eyes turned back on the woman, on the monster, and she saw true terror spike through Jeannie's eyes, the greys behind the glasses shimmering with sudden tears, with sudden understanding, "Jesus Christ ... She was _pregnant_."

Her mouth opened, and it would never again close. The shot popped off in the darkness, a flare of light illuminating the inside of the dinosaur's mouth for an instant, Boone's shadow standing starkly like some strange tongue lashing out in fury. A wet shatter preceded a heavy spatter showering the rocks behind them, and Jeannie fell stiffly to the ground, collapsing limply into a pile. Heavenly felt something hot spatter across the cheek that had still been facing Jeannie, but couldn't bring herself to think on the implications of that. She could barely bring herself to look back to the corpse she had helped create.

The sick feeling in her stomach that had begun in the lobby and continued through her shock and despair coiled into tight knots within her. It came to a head as she looked down at the ruins of Jeannie's face, at her frozen, blood soaked features, at the steady pulse of blood that poured sickeningly from the parallel holes in her head. The one on the front was terrible enough alone to look at, broken and uneven on her forehead, near her left temple - but on the back it was something out of a nightmare. The bullet had nearly demolished the entirety of the back of her skull, punched through her wispy hair and showered thick red chunks accented with the white of bits of bone. Her mouth lay open and frozen, in either a scream of a denial or a protest or maybe just a terrified shriek, something that Heavenly would never know, and would never hear.

Spots of red against black caught her eye and she looked down to her jacket. Chunks of crimson slid slowly down, and reaching a hand to her neck and cheek, she felt that it was much the same all the way to her hair line. She was no stranger to getting blood on her, she had tended some terrible wounds in her time - but it had never been like this. This wasn't blood that smeared her fingers in the act of healing; this was the exact opposite. This was blood, _viscera, _that had sprouted from a woman she had helped kill. This was the very incarnation of _death_, staining her neck and her face and painting her with the guilt of what she had helped do. The sickness in her stomach swelled upwards and Hev's throat caught it, tears smarting her eyes as she tried desperately to hold back the tide.

And when she failed, she turned back to the road, doubling over and vomitting up something that felt hot and chunky and only made her want to puke _more_.

And all the reasons that she had _deserved_ it, all the justifications she had told herself, all the things she had thought before it happened didn't make it any easier to clean that blood off. She hadn't returned to Boone, hadn't even thought about it until she was scrubbing clean the chunks of Jeannie May's last moments from her skin. By the time she had thought about it, she was already laying face down into her pillow, feeling like she wanted to scream but holding it back in her still burning throat. She thought she had slept - she _hoped_ she had slept - the image of terror burning in the middle aged woman's eyes all she could see when she tried to. It was everywhere in the room - across the walls, the windows, the dim glow of ED's lights.

And her back _hurt._

All she could think was how badly she wanted to go home.

There was a knock on the door, soft but certain, and somehow she knew exactly who it was. She mused briefly on not answering at all, on laying in that bed until someone came to force her out of it. So strong was this urging that she didn't quite know what caused her to push herself up, slowly and carefully, moving to the door with all the grace of a three legged brahmin. Opening the door presented only one surprise, and that was that the sun was already up. The figure that stood before her, the wide shouldered, sturdy built body of the sniper, she hadn't necessarily been expecting, but knew he would be the only one to come knocking on her door. He looked down to her as she answered, not speaking for a half a moment that, had she not been so exhausted, would have made her nervous. What did he _want_?

The moment passed and he held forward a brahmin skin bag, tied closed at the top with what looked like a shoelace, "I said that I would pay you." He spoke plainly, as if the act in question was something mundane, some petty errand he had her run. As if it was anything but helping him murder someone. Heavenly looked to the coins without responding, or making an expression, reaching out to them gingerly.

He didn't release them yet, though, at least not as her fingers finally lay across them, "How did you know?"

Heavenly looked up to him, and she once again felt the cold ugliness of that truth rise in her mind. That such an act had been committed, condoned, and allowed. That it had gone unanswered for until that previous night, "I found ..." Words failed her and she shook her head, "Boone ... I am so sorry. I didn't know ... I've never-"

His voice wasn't angry or annoyed, but was tempered with hints of impatience, "How did you _know_?"

"I have the bill of sale." She responded quickly, and he released the coins to her just as she did, as though that was her concern in the matter. She looked down to them, blankly, feeling the weight and hearing the dull click of caps within. She held the bag in both hands, looking back up to him, sympathy written across her features, "I never knew there could be people like _that_ in the world." She murmured, but he seemed unaffected by it. He lowered his hand, letting it fall to his side and moving his gaze over her head, as if considering something unspoken. He didn't respond until she spoke again, her tongue fumbling over the right words to say, "Do you ... Do you feel better? Did this _help_?"

He tilted his face back to her, and it seemed he was looking at her for the first time. His gaze swept up the legnth of her disheveled appearance, something different flickering just behind the steel he wore in his eyes. His reply came simply and quietly, toned evenly as all his replies were, "Yes."

Hev nodded to him, looking down to the bag she held. It didn't feel right taking it, but she wasn't a complete idiot - if she didn't find some way to make more money, she would run out long before Checkered Suit had a second chance to kill her in Vegas. The odds were already against her, and long gone was the optimism she had felt when she left Station Charlie. She held the fresh scars and memories of just how badly the desert wanted her dead, and for the first time in her life, she had taken a glimpse at the face of true evil. She was exhausted, in pain, and so thoroughly _done_ with it all.

The Mojave had won. Hev was taking this money, and she was going home.

"Are you alright?" His voice was even and quiet, almost apathetic, but it was the _words_ that caused her head to snap up in surprise. Concern wasn't something she had imagine he would show, even if she did picture herself looking like hell. He had probably seen her throw up just after Jeannie had taken the bullet, and she imagined that didn't make her look quite like the average, tough-as-nails wasteland wanderer. She probably didn't look like the average _anything_ that belonged out in the desert, and no amount of leather and guns could change that. Still, the concern was appreciated, even if she was far too tired to properly show as much.

"I'll _be_ alright." She muttered, "Getting back home will expedite that process." Looking up to him, she tossed her head back to the room, "First I think I'm going to retreat underneath my covers and try to pretend you didn't see me puke."

He didn't respond to the small joke, just nodded, as mechanically as ever."Yeah. Thanks for helping me. I need to go rest up. I won't be staying here much longer."

She was pretty certain that was the end of the conversation, but he was still _standing_ there, and she didn't know why. An edge of nervousness peaked over her mind as he stood motionless, as if waiting for something. She remained unmoving by the door, save for the random tense fidget, the silence spreading between them. She suddenly had the nonsensical notion that this was the ending of some kind of bizarre first date, and that maybe she was supposed to invite him in, or something along those lines. Exchange stories, become drinking buddies?

Why wouldn't he _leave_?

Hev smiled awkwardly and, nodding, moved to shut the door, as rude as it seemed - she was too tired to deal with people's expectations. Whatever strange idea he had gotten in his head, she was sure she wanted no part of. Helping him kill someone didn't make them friends, and it certainly wasn't going to be the start of some weird romantic entanglement. As the door began to shut, however, he placed his hand against it, an action that made her heart skip in her chest. _Now_ she was worried - he was obviously much bigger and stronger than she was, and _who_ exactly was there to help her if he had a horrible plan in store? Her mind was fumbling, wondering where she had left her gun, preferably her _big_ one that could make him explode in to tiny little stoic _pieces_, and just what one had to do to incur ED's diddy of wrath.

"Um." He spoke softly, paused a moment, and when she didn't catch on, completed the thought, "My beret."

"Oh!" Heavenly's cheeks burned with embarrassment, and she was all too willing to turn away in order to retrieve the hat. She suddenly felt very _stupid_ for assuming he wanted anything _but, _and again felt the impatient urge to return home. Between nearly getting killed and making a complete fool of herself, Nevada had seen quite enough of Heavenly Monroe. Gathering his beret from the side table near the door, she held it out to him, hoping it was too dim to see the pink spread across her cheeks, "Sorry. I wasn't-"

"It's fine." Again he didn't sound angry, or annoyed, even though such short replies could have been misconstrued as such. He seemed to be the sort to only mean exactly what he said, and that was a trait she admired, and found was too rare in the world. He replaced it on his head and nodded to her, removing his hand from the door and exiting from her sight. Heavenly let the door slide close, clicking the lock into place.

...

"You'll like the farm," She spoke, watching the railroad tracks beneath her, as she passed each broken bit of wood, "It gets kinda noisy, sometimes. _Four_ of my brothers are married, if you can imagine that, and they all just _had_ to have kids. And they can't move out, of course, so we'll end up sharing a room with little girls who _always_ want to hear stories before they go to sleep." She tilted her head up, considering, "You know, maybe I can program you to playback recordings. Then they could stop pestering _me_ and start pestering _you_. You don't need to sleep."

ED floated silently, nonchalantly, nary a judgment about her decision to give up. She had to admire that about robots; they never judged anyone. Unless they were programmed to do so, but what sort of self hating martyr would _ever_ do that?

She walked the long railroad back towards Station Charlie, the sun heating her leather jacket and causing her back to sweat, which in turn caused her wounds to sting. The doctor had been right, at least, about the wounds healing quickly with twice daily stimpacks - the pain wasn't near the ferocity it had been just two short days ago when she had arrived in Novac. She reasoned that she would go to the Doctor after she returned from Charlie, getting her bandages changed before linking up with whatever passing caravan was heading back west. She had only two matters to resolve before she departed for home, and the second would be to get her bandages changed.

The first she was in the midst of completing; she had to give Stella back her hat.

She wasn't sure why she felt the need to; Stella hadn't given it to her on the condition that she remained on the path to Vegas. The Ranger's words of encouragement had given Hev a boost of optimism that had aided her in the last few days of her journey, and she was appreciative of that, and the gift she hadn't really deserved. The hat seemed almost symbolic to her, a symbol of her time in the Mojave, of her brush with death in the Primm Pass. Bringing it home would serve as little more than a reminder of what she wasn't strong enough to do, of the foolishness that had led her to ever believe she was. ED was going to be more than enough of a depressing reminder, floating around her home, but she couldn't just ditch him back in Primm.

That was far too long of a walk.

The Ranger station was decidedly closer, just an hour out of town and a straight shot down the railroad tracks. There was little else to do for the remainder of the day - of the two people she had befriended in town one was dead and the other was the one who had killed her. And rather than sit around all day and whine about the implications of leading a woman to her death, she preferred a long, uncomfortable walk in the blistering heat. She supposed she could have struck up a conversation with Cliff, but his shop smelled a little funny and she wasn't sure how she was going to fake surprise when he told her of finding Jeannie's body.

ED whirred and Heavenly brought her eyes up to the piles of ancient cars that served as sniper towers, circling around the smaller building. The familiar sight of the NCR flag made her smile small, her boots scuffing against the sand as she departed the tracks and entered the enclosure of piled car frames. Her surroundings were strangely quiet, and if she had been a more seasoned wanderer, that would have set alarm bells ringing in her head. As it was, she did feel the bare tingle of apprehension, a bad feeling settling in over her head and making the bright day seem darker. There was no movement between the buildings, no Rangers nor soldiers milling about the hollowed out insides of the piled cars and trailers. She had seen at least a few people on the outside, before, when she had departed with Stella leading her. Hev felt her brow crease, moving further into the stillness of the base.

"Probably on patrol." She murmured back to ED, the soft sound of sand crunching under her boots near deafening in comparison to the silence that surrounded her. She presumed she could just leave the hat with whomever they had left behind inside the communications building. She made her way to the squat building that the cars surrounded, the same building where the soldiers had taken her broken body after the incident with Blinky. She found the door open, which led her to believe that there must be _someone_ home, and felt a slow coming relief at that. Said relief had barely had time to bud up inside her, let alone bloom, when it withered and died in her chest with the sight beyond the door.

_Bodies_.

"No." Heavenly said simply, her voice cracking at the edges, as if the word alone would make it all not real, "I was just here. I was just _here_. This can't -" She cut off and felt a sob rise up in her throat, one she quickly bit off. The bodies that lay strewn about the room within hadn't been just _killed_, they had been _hacked_ into with some sort of a blade. There were no bullet casings, no holes in the walls, and half the bodies were in various stages of undress. The attack had seemed to come at night - quickly and silently - and the freshness of the blood indicated that it had most likely been _last_ night.

The Ranger's hat that she had held in preparation for returning it slipped from her numb grasp, falling with a quiet rustle to the floor. She recognized the faces around her, knew these to be the people who had saved her life just a short time ago. The shock of it all kept her from even crying, or screaming, but the sheer debauchery that surrounded her was slowly overwhelming her senses. Leaning down to retrieve the hat so that she could get the _hell_ out of that room, her eyes spotted a sliver of gray that drew her attention.

It lay next to the head of a man named Stepinac, the comm officer who had fixed ED while she recovered. She placed Stella's hat on her head and reached forward for the small item she saw, trying to avoid the man's flat, glassy stare. Her fingers curled quietly around the item, which she knew a moment after touching it to be a holotape, and then she rose, keeping her eyes away from the bloody, disfigured bodies that surrounded her. There wasn't anywhere she _could_ look that offered any sense of comfort - knotted strings of blood clung to every wall, flung outwards and spattering as blades chopped downwards into the dying. She didn't want to remain any longer, didn't want to find Stella's lifeless gaze staring up at her, didn't want to think about the horrors that had been committed in that room as Hev had been peacefully sleeping. Heavenly turned quickly and fled from the room, departed like a coward to escape the dead stares of eyes that had been full of life just a few days before.

"I was just ..." She whispered, and saw ED floating silently outside of the building. She stared at him, long and empty, uncertain what to say. Uncertain if what she had just walked away from was a _nightmare_ and that she would soon wake up. "I was just here ... How ... I was just _here_." She repeated again and again, the denial heavy in her voice. She leaned back against the door, sliding down the length of it and feeding the holotape into her Pip-Boy. Her back sparked in pain, but it was easily ignored with all the images and all the dismay that swirled in her heart.

The Pip-Boy made a short clicking sound as the contents of the tape were downloaded. A short second passed as it loaded the relevant information it had received, and then it began the playback. The disembodied voice that spilled forth wasn't a record from the Rangers as she expected, nor an affirmation of Stella's survival as she had hoped. The voice was calm, and strong, and felt no remorse for professing to be at fault of the slaughter behind her. Tears finally came to her eyes and she felt like she was going to be able to do little more than curl up in front of that door until the Legion returned and found _her_ next.

But a single sentence at the end of the tape banished the tears. That last note forced her to her feet, steeled her resolve. She was tired of being helpless; evil was not going to prevail in this. _This_ would not go unanswered for. As that last sentence played, over and over again in her mind, Heavenly could see only one sane path to take. She saw it clearly, laid out before her, and she wouldn't step away from it.

_We took one of the women alive._

And _like hell_ they were going to keep her.

...

Quitting drinking was much, much harder than people made it out to be.

Boone glared down at the bottle, sitting in his seat at the bare little table in the center of his room. He had slept for about three hours before he woke, unable to continue sleeping. A strange dream had persisted in his mind, and he tried fervently to forget about it, an endeavor that the bottle of whiskey in his hand was going to aid him in. He rubbed his hand over his face, wishing that forgetting had been as easy as revenge.

Now two faces plagued his mind, both being of women he had killed. His thoughts still fumbled blankly over the revelation that Jeannie had sold Carla, knowing that she had been pregnant with his child. It made sense in a lot of ways that only revealed themselves to him in hindsight. A dozen more things about it _didn't_ make sense, but perhaps that was only because he couldn't, in his right mind, imagine anyone to be such a cold-hearted _bitch._ Though something led him to believe it hadn't been about Jeannie at all, or for that matter, about Carla. It had always been about him, about the death he had dealt out and the repercussions he had coming to him. It was only fair; balanced, to take a life and then to lose one. And he had taken far more than one. The small matter of vengeance didn't erase all the hurt he had caused, and he was certain the desert wasn't finished with him.

Boone raised the bottle to his lips, the bitter heat of the whiskey draining down his throat. He made a face as he swallowed it back, looking around the bare room and trying _not_ to see her in every corner. He knew he had to get out of the town; not necessarily because anyone would be _looking_ for him in regards to Jeannie's death, but because there was nothing for him there anymore. Nothing but memories and whiskey, and a spot on a perch. A job he no longer cared to keep. He had found what he had been looking for so desperately, and after the satisfaction of revenge had been sated, it left him with nothing. Nothing to search for, nothing to look forward to. Just an empty room and too long nights and the knowledge that his purpose had been fulfilled.

_This_ was why it was so hard to quit drinking.

He was about to raise the bottle to his lips when there was a knock at the door. He turned to look at it shortly, thinking at first it had to be Manny - but Manny's shift wouldn't be ending for _hours_. It could have been Cliff or the old Ranger checking up on him - they sometimes did that, and Boone usually just ignored them until they left. He didn't have time for people. He had a long day of doing _nothing_ spread out before him, and interruptions were not something he could afford. Turning away from the door, he thumbed at the faded paper label of the bottle, waiting patiently for whomever it was to leave him alone.

He hadn't expected to hear the voice of a girl. A voice near cracking, but still urgent enough to draw his attention. He was still intending to ignore her until she left, but the sincerity of her voice did, at least, draw him to look at the door, "Boone. Please. It's Monroe. It's - It's the girl who helped you find - who _helped_ you. Please, open the door."

The girl who had helped him kill Jeannie, she meant. He still didn't raise - their business had been concluded. He appreciated her help in the matter, and didn't necessarily _dislike_ her, he just wasn't in any mood to be speaking with people, especially those who didn't know him. Then again, he considered, she _had_ helped him, and while he had paid her for it, if it hadn't been for her then he would be having an even _tougher_ time quitting drinking.

He pushed himself up and reluctantly opened the door. He would listen patiently to whatever was on her mind, presumably something about Jeannie's death, and then inform her that he needed to rest up for the coming night. As his eyes found her small face, he quickly realized this would be no simple conversation, and he even considered that he shouldn't have opened the door in the first place.

She looked like she had been crying, and the dirt on her face meant she had been on the road recently. Her hair was disheveled, clumps of it falling from the bindings of the messy bun she kept it in, poking out from underneath the Ranger hat she wore. Her eyes had the look of someone desperate, someone who _needed_ help, and his immediate thought in response to that was that she had come to the wrong place. He wasn't sure what she had been _thinking, _being in the condition that she was, coming to someone she had only spoken to twice looking for help. He stood quietly and waited for her to explain, indifference written across his face as it always was.

"I'm sorry. I didn't know where else I could go. I didn't know who could _help_ me, but you were First Recon and that means you're good at tracking and shooting and I'm _really_ terrible at both those things. So I'm ... I'm sorry, and I didn't want to bother you, but I really, really need your help." She took a breath after the rush to spit all that out subsided, and she looked up to him again, saying the only words she had ever really _needed _to say to procure his assistance.

"It's the Legion."

"I'll get my gun."

Monroe blinked, cutting off what was sure to be another overlong, exasperated explanation. Her brow furrowed, desperation replaced with confusion, her voice coming out softly as he turned to gather what he would need, "Uh ... That was ... Much easier than I thought it was going to be."

"What can I say." He spoke dryly, shouldering the strap for his rifle, "I'm an agreeable guy."


	8. Chapter 8

When rumors of the Legion had first started spreading through the states of the Republic, there were several people she knew who were incredulous to the claims of an army that primarily used outdated weaponry. The first stories of their successful skirmishes with the Rangers only served to further baffle the farmers and civilians. It stood to reason - it still did, really - that any army who used little more than machetes and brass knuckles would be easily mowed down with an automatic rifle. Heavenly herself had been among those who stuck their noses up to stories of Centurions running Rangers down through a hail of gunfire and shoving a blade through their ribs. It had always seemed logical to her that guns - and to that extent, technology - would win over any battle when it came to a frontal assault. Guns, for starters, had range over _anything_ melee, as Boone had been demonstrating to her for the better half of the afternoon by killing things she couldn't even _see_.

And even though three years ago at the Dam, the Legion had very nearly proven her argument erroneous, she hadn't reconsidered the notion that guns were better than knives. She would wager that few in the NCR had. The Legion, they had touted, carry all the technology of prehistoric man, and there is no need to fear cave men who taught themselves a dead language.

Though she would also wager that none of _them_ had ever had a spear brushing their collar bone in the hand of a very angry looking young man. Because if they had, they would very quickly come to the same conclusion that Heavenly had.

Spears are fucking _scary_.

It wasn't the main encampment, that much her new sniper buddy had seen, from a distance. There were three bedrolls unfurled in a pointed circle around a hastily constructed camp fire, the lumps and dirt present in the blankets suggesting the inhabitants had been there at least a night. The sole three occupants were sitting in front of the fire, the low hanging sun casting their shadows out ominously as they spoke briskly amongst themselves. It was too small for the Raid Camp, Boone had said, that this was just scouts, or a checkpoint. He said they could take them out, quick and quiet, and follow their tracks to the Raid Camp. The Raid Camp would be where they gathered slaves, holding them until mass transport to Cottonwood could be arranged. She didn't know how he _knew_ all that, but was pretty sure that she wasn't going to be answered, even if she asked.

Quick and quiet sounded to her like the foundation of a plan. Heavenly was good with that - the _thinking_ - and so she had come up with one. Boone would stay prone at distance and snipe the three that had gathered around the campfire. Heavenly would stay low and out of sight, round around on the squat hill that overlooked the little camp site and signal if she saw any additional scouts patrolling the area. By the time they spotted Hev, Boone could have put neat little holes in the center of their heads - he just needed to know where to aim. She wouldn't have called it a _great_ plan, but it definitely was a _good_ one. Decent enough for someone who studied medicine, and not tactics. The scouts would go down quick and quiet and then, following their tracks back to the Raid camp, they would find Stella and have a _picnic_ and everything would be just rainbows and blue birds all the way back to Novac.

In hindsight, she realized that she _probably _should have warned Boone of her deadly combination of terrible luck and utter gracelessness.

She had come too close to the overlook of the small hill, and the ground had given way. She had tumbled down across loose sand and bits of dried grass, landing sprawled in the middle of three legionarries that seemed to mirror her surprise. They had stood, one by one, as Hev recovered from the spike of pain in her back and the vertigo of her fall, two of the three gathering their pointy weapons. She pushed herself to her feet just as the look on each face melted into annoyance and traces of anger, and found her own confusion falling away to smug acceptance. _Of course_ she would fall down the hill and into the middle of three spear toting sociopaths. _Why wouldn't_ her plan go in the exact opposite direction it was supposed to.

"Um." Heavenly swallowed nervously, feeling her throat move against the string of Stella's hat, which had fallen from her head and hung against her back, "I am _totally_ a fan of totalitarian government and forced labor. Keep up the _good work_." She began moving to one side, and it was at that moment that she discovered just how ridiculously terrifying it was to be held at spear point. The first man raised his weapon, letting it hover maliciously at the hollow between her collar bones.

His lip curled into a sneer as he looked her over, relaxing his guard faintly but not allowing the spear tip to droop. The second rounded to her flank hastily, drawing his spear up and poking at the hat that hung around her neck. She felt the hat move slightly, but didn't dare move herself, her eyes focused on the rough, ground down flat of the spear and the rust colored stains at it's edges. The third stood a ways back still, his hand on the hilt of a machete, his features hidden under layers of cloth attached to the feathered helmet he wore. Apparently the first two had neglected to equip _their_ ridiculous headdresses that day, as she could see every annoyed wrinkle in the sneers they wore.

"Another of the Profligate Rangers." The second one growled to the first, the spear remaining pointed towards the hat. He began to speak again, but the first man, who's spear tip still had _all _of her attention, was having none of it, "Don't be a fool. She possesses none of their skills. She is but a Dissolute."

"You guys seem pretty busy," Hev stuttered out, eyes never leaving the sharpened tip of the weapon, "I should probably-"

"Be silent, woman!" The second growled, and she felt the tip of his spear brush her back, "_You_ need to be taught your _place_." Hev felt something bitter rise up in the back of her throat, a flash of anger sparking through her mind. Her _place_? Those must have been the most infuriating two words a woman could hear in all her life, but indignation wasn't about to spur her towards suicide. She couldn't afford to be reckless, or she would find her place to be on the ground, bleeding from a hole in the neck. She managed a slight glare, directed at the spear tip.

"Stop." The third man finally spoke, his voice more calm and controlled than those of the younger men in front of him. His words were muffled by the cloth covering his mouth, but he spoke audibly enough for his tone to carry a hint of authority, "The Dissolute is of child bearing age. She will be brought back to the camp - unharmed." The final word hung in the air with a finality that, slowly, forced the two who stood armed to lower their spears. The man in the strange headdress walked forward, strides measured with confidence, coming to a stop towering over her. His tone was soft, she would almost say _reassuring_, if she didn't know better, "The Dissolute will learn her place, and will be better for it."

_DA-dada-DA-dada-dadadada-DA_

Hev felt the corner of her mouth twitch, "It's really not _my_ place you should be worried about."

The loud pop of Boone's first shot nearly beat the cutting twang of the laser, and she really couldn't tell which landed first. For all the bravado of her words, she decided the best course of action for her, at that point, would be to drop to the _ground_ and pray to God the men above didn't decide to ignore the active threats and go for the cowering one. Headdress stumbled as ED's blast impacted his back, grunted audibly but remained on his feet, drawing his machete with one quick motion. One of the younger men fell to the ground in a heap, blood pumping out from a messy, uneven patch of broken skull near his temple. The second had turned to the direction of the sniper's shots, making it a full two steps forward before a spray of red and a muffle smacking sound obliterated his throat. He pitched forward into the dirt, ragged gasping sounds and the twitching of his fingers portraying the last, fleeting moments of his life.

As this was happening, Headdress was charging at ED, the little floating eyebot turning towards him as innocuous as ever. He lifted the machete high in the air, leaping forward off his leading foot and attacking a _robot_ with a _sword_. The whole scene lit brilliantly in red for about three seconds as ED's laser fired twice in quick succession, each stroke slamming against the man's chest. The laser elicited smoke from flesh and armor alike as his machete stroked down onto ED's bulk, metal clanging against metal but doing little more than scratching at the dirt caked on the bot's frame. He came back to his feet and seemed to finally succumb to repeated laser burns, stumbling as his boots dug into dirt, then falling face forward into ED's shadow.

Heavenly slumped back, sitting on her rear in the dirt and looking wide eyed from corpse to corpse. She had won another battle without actually having to _do_ anything, and that in itself felt pretty good.

Boone came into sight as he rounded the hill, reloading his rifle and stepping nonchalantly over the still twitching corpse of the young man he had shot in the throat. As he neared her, he slung his rifle back over his shoulder, offering a hand down to her that she couldn't help but stare at, bewildered. Glancing pointedly at the two corpses that he had taken out in a matter of minutes, she spoke softly, "You're ... _Really_ good at this." Finally she took his hand, and he practically hauled her to her feet before replying softly.

"I know." He said evenly, releasing his grip as soon as she was on her feet. He turned from her, moving to the closest corpse and kneeling, turning him onto his back and going through the pouches secured to his waist. Apparently not finding anything worth pulling out, he straightened and turned, moving to a duffle near one of the sleeping bags. Unfastening the tie, he widened the opening and began searching that as well, making steady progress while Hev could just stand and stare.

"So." She muttered, adjusting her weight nervously from side to side, "That went well, right?"

He exhaled a short breath that might have been a laugh, if she wasn't acutely aware of his inability to _feel_, "Yeah." He paused in his looting, glancing up at her from behind his shades - the lenses of which appeared to be clear, until exposed to sunlight - and now shadowed over his eyes with dim gray, "How have you _survived_ this long?" She really wished she could pretend that was a _joke_, but she was fairly certain _ED_ was more likely to crack a joke than Mr. Stoic.

Hev groaned faintly, taking a step forward and lowering herself to sit on a dead man's bedroll. "I _really_ don't know." She said honestly, softly, shifting her back uncomfortably against her leather jacket. The pain wasn't so horrible anymore, but she was becoming increasingly uneasy about those scattered reports she had heard of stimpack addiction. It wasn't something overly common, but it was just as much a possibility as any other drug dependence. She was also beginning to worry about the _lack_ of pain she was in - she couldn't tell if it felt better because of the accelerated healing of the drug, or because of it's pain killer. Were her wounds _healing_, or did they just _feel_ like they were?

One thing she did know was that she was sweating, and it was causing irritation to _whatever_ was going on back there.

She hadn't seen him come forward, holding something dull and long with a wooden stock. Pushing her glasses up her nose to get a better look, she tentatively reached forward to take the barrel of the gun he was handing her. He stayed silent as he did, as though it was completely normal for people to just hand other people guns out of the blue. He stepped away, moving to the next corpse, and didn't appear as though he _was_ going to give her an explanation at all. She held the gun in a single hand, still away from her body as if it were some strange, outlandish thing, the confusion spilling plainly over her features. After a moment, he glanced up and caught the look, features remaining impassive as he spoke, "It's a gun."

"Oh." Hev exclaimed dryly, keeping her stare trained on him, "What's a gun."

He gave her a look which she _guessed_ was supposed to be exasperation, but for Boone it simply equated to raising his eyebrows a bit. He pulled a bottle of water out of one of the pouches on the corpse, then straightened once more and began a slow walk towards the slope of the hill, "Cowboy Repeater. It's single shot, lever action - makes it more accurate, controllable. Wooden stock means it's lighter than most other rifles. You should have an easier time firing it." He moved around the curve of the ridge, raising his gun and peering down the scope, sweeping his gaze off across the horizon, presumably looking for their target.

Hev blinked, slowly lowering the gun into her lap. "Oh." She said dumbly, looking down at the gun just to give her eyes something to do besides stare at him. He was becoming something of an enigma - every time she thought she had his personality pegged down, he did something _off_ and changed the definition. He obviously had some psychological damage - though that hardly made him unique among NCR veterans - and it shone true in whatever _little_ he ever managed to say. He was taciturn, blunt, and downright _abrasive_ at times, but it seemed like a rough surface covering good intentions. It was expressly _nice_ of him to consider her less than average shooting skills and offer a suitable solution to them, especially since she had only mentioned in passing how horrific they were. That wasn't even touching on the fact that he had chosen to help her when he barely knew her. Even if she guessed it had more to do with his unspoken vendetta and less to do with actually helping her, the fact remained that she hadn't a shot in hell of doing what they were doing by herself.

"Stay here." He said simply, and the crunch of his boots led him away from the camp. He began up the ridge behind her, forcing small rocks into cartwheels down the incline and crunching the dead remnants of grass as he went, searching for a higher point in the terrain. She guessed he was looking for the Raid Camp, looking for some view from up high that would allow the scope of his rifle to survey the outlying spread of barren land that surrounded them. Able to see and estimate their enemies, both their numbers and their defenses, and plan before they inevitably struck.

Or he could be taking a piss. Hell if she knew.

Hev took the gun and tried to get accustomed to the weight of it, and the feel of it in her hands. Her thumb ran over the indent on it's surface where ammunition was to be fed, and her opposite hand curled around the loop of the lever on it's lower half. Strange to receive a gift from him, but still appreciated enough that she felt she should have thanked him, and not responded with sarcasm. Whatever thanks she could give would have to be put on hold until that picturesque picnic she imagined. No word of gratitude, no matter how sincere, would be well received when men with _spears_ were breathing down their necks. The even pattern of crunches sounded behind her, looming closer, announcing his quick return and breaking her from her thoughts. She heard him make a noise in his throat as he neared, something armed with emotion that she hadn't heard from him before, and it caused her to glance up.

His boots kicked noisily at the rough sand as he came back down the ridge, watching his step until he reached it's base. Moving past her and around the campfire, he aimed the scope in the opposite direction and returned his eyes to the desert. Hev pushed herself to her feet and trudged slowly to his side, peering out across the bare hills that sprawled out in the dimming light of the setting sun. He didn't make another noise, but she could almost feel the tension rolling off him, so she remained quiet for several minutes and just stood there to his right. The scope moved imperceptibly from the left to the right as he surveyed whatever was beyond the hills that stretched before them. Hev cleared her throat, a hint of a question that she hadn't yet asked, and when he didn't respond to that, she made her inquiry more obvious. "How many?"

Boone lowered his rifle, a frown tugging at his usually impassive features. He continued looking in the way of the encampment, but she had the feeling he wasn't really seeing it, or the hills anymore. Exhaling a breath, his voice was even, if somewhat morose, "A lot."

Heavenly felt something in her chest sink at his tone, and at the sentence fragment that suggested this would be the end of the line for them. She slipped the Repeater's strap over her shoulder, looking towards the horizon, unable to see what he saw but fully able to imagine the grim odds. Making a face, she looked back to the Legion he had killed in a span of minutes, finding her voice slowly among the frozen features of the dead, "I'm ..." Her voice failed momentarily as she tried _not_ to comprehend the insanity of the words she spoke, "I'm not giving up. I understand if you want to, there's no guarantee that we'll walk away from this. I can't make you -"

"I'm in." Her turned towards her, his face unreadable but his voice confident, "You're going to want to pull out that grenade launcher. The slaves are up on a ridge near the supply tent - most of the Legionaries are below that, in the tents they've set up."

Heavenly blinked up at him dumbly, feeling, despite herself, slight suspicion at his eagerness to help her. He was about to walk into a situation where he could very well _die_, and he hadn't a moment of hesitation. She couldn't comprehend the sort of hatred that had to be inside him, hidden beneath all the layers of cold stoicism, that would force him into a death march towards a suicide mission. Hev was going for Stella - going for someone who had saved her life - but Boone had no such stake. He was walking into this camp, moving ever closer to death, and he didn't even _care_. Like everything that had made the man inside him at been scooped out and replaced by blood lust and indifference.

Maybe, she considered with a silent degree of pity, he was hoping that through some miracle, he would find his wife out here. Maybe despite his claims he still held hope that one day they would be reunited. And who was Heavenly to stomp out that glimmer of hope, especially for a man so utterly lost in hopelessness? Maybe they _would_ find her. Maybe her stoic sniper friend would be given some dim light in the middle of all his darkness.

"If we wait a few more hours," He continued, oblivious to her thoughts, tone even as he brought the scope back up to peer over the ridge and towards the camp, "We'll only have to deal with the ones on night watch. You could hit a tent with a grenade, take out a few before the rest wake up."

Hev broke away from her reverie and blinked, again, feeling the first inkling of a terrible plan dawning on her, "Wait ... What did you just-"

He sighed, voice becoming more forceful in the annoyance of repeating himself, "In a few hours the night watch will be- "

"No, not that. Blowing them up. In their sleep." Heavenly looked back to the men they had killed, absently picking at the strap of her new rifle with a nail. She bit down on her lower lip, eyes flicking up and down the man who had been in the headdress, an idea brewing slowly in her mind. An idea that could go very wrong, very fast, but could be their only hope to walk away without a dozen or so spears sticking out of their backs. "I think ... I think I have an idea."

He lowered the rifle, turning towards her and following her gaze to the dead. Frowning, his voice came stern, audible over the crackling of the fire but calm as ever, "Huh. Hope it works better than your last plan."

Heavenly stifled a laugh. She didn't really _feel_ like laughing, as her impending death wasn't very _funny_, but the situation was, in some ways, grimly hilarious. Making a mistake would definitely cause her death. On the other hand, if things went well, she would have actually _contributed_ to their little suicide mission. Done something helpful, rather than just cower and trip and make sardonic comments.

"Me too."

...

Twenty-six-point-zero-eight percent chance she had stumbled onto a Deathclaw nest somewhere outside of Nelson.

Thirty-two-point-sixty-four percent chance she had been killed by Vipers after she left Novac.

Sixty-five-point-eighty-nine percent chance she had given up and started a trip back towards California.

Fifty-seven-point-sixty-five percent chance that the Legion had captured her and dragged her back to Cottonwood.

Robert House frowned at that assessment.

The Legion had been becoming more and more bold in the Mojave, and the NCR was failing his hopes that they could keep them partially sustained. Before, the NCR's shortcomings had been little more than a nuisance. If the Courier had been picked up by Legion slavers because of the Republic's ineptitude, however, he would be far more than simply displeased. Sightings had placed Legion slaving bands around Novac as recently as when Victor had left the town - House was also aware, through pilfered NCR intelligence reports, of the occupation of Nelson. He hadn't the time nor resources, let alone the _desire_, to waste yet _another_ rescue attempt on the Courier. If she had been stupid enough to get herself caught, his plans would have to follow a new stratagem. He _had_ a contingency plan, he just didn't yet feel the pressing need to _use_ it.

He leaned back in his chair, swirling brandy in his glass. The study was dark lit, the entirety of the back wall covered in monitors that endlessly scrolled numbers - probability programs, daily reports, casino earnings, and a few security cameras that had been set up around the city. He sat in a plush velvet chair, and behind him music spilled in from the other end of the room. Jane sat at a piano, wearing a shimmering evening gown and playing slowly a melody that he had heard many times before, but found no less pleasing now. Even with the thousands of songs that Jane had been programmed with, after two hundred years, any simpleton would have memorized every chord. For a genius like himself, memorization came much sooner.

Of course, nothing in the room really _existed_. Jane wasn't even _alive_ anymore, not like he was. She had died hundreds of years ago, in a bygone age that would haunt his thoughts like an effervescent dream, cling to the shadows he saw in his mind. That was all the room really was - just what his mind told his body he was doing. So much more than petty virtual reality equipment, he was wired directly into the 38, seeing through a hundred eyes at once, whenever he chose to see as such. Every number scrolling on the screens that he watched were actually thought processes that had been programmed into the computers linked directly to his mind. This was the undying dream of any mortal man. He would sit in his chair, sip brandy that never diminished, live an immortal life of control balanced with benevolence.

And from that vantage point in his mind, he would rebuild the broken bits of his city. And from that city, he would repair the shattered remnants of humanity.

He paused as he brought the glass back to his lips, one fine dark eyebrow arching as a report from The Tops scrolled past. Benny had returned. A full day ahead of his projections.

The Chip sat once again in his city. Close enough to grasp it, close enough for the fruition of a decade of planning. Just down a single road, yet far enough on the distant horizon of too human hope for him to reach out and take it. Benny would continue whatever scheme he had been brewing in the many hours he stayed locked away in his room, and House would stay in his barricaded tower, waiting for his young protege to make the next move. House was content to wait - at least for now, at least until the numbers read stronger on the fate of his Courier - hiding his hand and waiting for his opponent to make a mistake.

He, after all, had the comfort and reassurance of an immortal life, a police force of immaculate Pre-war robots, and a near impenetrable fortress. What did Benny have? Armed thugs who still thought like the savages _Robert House_ had uplifted them from. Benny would make a mistake, that much House needed no numbers to tell him. Benny was smart for a tribal, but that was in no way a compliment to his intellect.

Jane's song ended and House smiled faintly, tilting his head back to her.

"Blue Moon, Jane."

Jane didn't speak as she assented, the first chords pealing delightfully out across the room. House leaned back in his chair and watched his monitors. The wayward stumbling of drunken soldiers wandering his streets, the clean, fast pace of his Securitrons patrolling, the brilliant luminosity of neon lights, glimmering across clean, even cement. Night was coming to Vegas, to all of the Mojave, but his city was a light in the middle of the darkness. His Vegas broke through the hopelessness of the wasteland, a single beacon of promise, of a future. Of fortunes waiting on the luck of a roll, on the numbers to deem one worthy. Lives were made and ruined in Vegas, a prophetic foreshadowing of his city's role in the future of mankind.

Soon the Chip would be in his grasp, and it's contents would spill through his mind and his computers, bringing with it a light to end all darkness.

New Vegas would have it's army. It's promise of independence.

He was a _genius._

The soft lilting of the pianos keys sang across the empty room, a soundtrack to the numbers that scrolled before him. His lips curled into a slight smile, his words a bare whisper below a song he had heard hundreds of times before.

"Where are you, Miss Monroe?"

...

"This isn't going to work." Boone's words came flat and honest, his gaze stretching out to the horizon. Darkness had fallen on the wasteland, now only illuminated by the pale light of a crescent moon and the unearthly smear of color on the distant horizon he knew to be Vegas. The sliver of moon spilled minimal light across the bleak sands of the desert, doing little more than to create a few eerie shadows. If he had a thermal scope he would better be able to cover her when this plan of hers went to shit - which was most certainly the road it was on. As it was, he was going to have to be sniping at vague shadows and dark figures, though her short stature alone would keep him from accidentally firing on her.

Which was just another reason this was not going to work.

"Alright. I'm done."

He turned back towards the camp fire, and towards the dead Legionaries that surrounded it. The Decanus had been stripped of his armor and helmet, leaving one bare body to lay among the two still armored recruits. Monroe now wore the padded, scarlet stained armor of a Legion officer, the feathered helmet looking somewhat bumpy and uneven, after being pulled on over her long hair. It was a ridiculous thing to behold -so short and frail, padding layered upon her like a child sitting in an adult's sleeping bag. Underneath the shoulders and chest plate that looked so large she was almost _swimming _in them, came her bare legs, too curved and feminine to be taken for anything but. Below that, her calves sank into the dark recesses of boots with openings that were too wide.

This was _not_ going to work.

"How do I look?" Her words came muffled, from behind the layers of cloth that the Decanus wore over their faces.

"Like a girl." He muttered, hoping she realized the significance of that. The Legion did not recruit women into their ranks - they enslaved them. Broke them down into shadows of what they were, used them for free labor and forced them to bare the children of Officers who had won them through prestige or money. "This isn't going to work." He didn't like to repeat himself, but felt that particular point desperately needed to be reiterated.

Monroe groaned, stepping forward and gathering a spear that had fallen near one of the bodies. Her muffled words rose just about the crackle of the campfire, "Have you always been this optimistic, or is this something the NCR did for you?" Her eyes squinted faintly, "It's all those motivation posters, isn't it?"

He frowned, "This isn't a game." He stated simply, any accusation that could have been inherent in the sentence missing entirely from it. It was simply a statement. He wasn't so far gone that he could let a girl walk into certain death without at least saying something on the matter, "It's too dark to see them. I can't cover you. Not as well as I could before. If they see you before you set off the explosions they'll _kill_ you."

Monroe swiveled her head up to him, any expression of fear or doubt she may have had lost behind the layers of cloth that covered her face. Her eyes, still wearing her glasses - because _those_ helped the disguise - and peering out from the middle of the helmet, didn't appear to change, "And if I don't at least _try_, what will they do to Stella." It wasn't a question; she didn't fully know, he suspected, but she knew that he _did_. And so the question came as a statement, and Boone felt his frown deepen incrementally before smoothing out to apathy once more.

What he really suspected, he hadn't told her. He had no qualms about following her to kill Legionaries, but he didn't believe they would be making a rescue of any sort. He hadn't wanted to tell her that a high priority capture, such as a Ranger, would have most likely been taken directly back to Cottonwood, with only a short resupply at the encampment before them. He hadn't lied - the tracks from Charlie led back to the Raid Camp - but he had neglected to inform her of his opinion on the matter. She hadn't asked it, but that did little to alleviate the shred of guilt he felt for the omission. He couldn't quite place if he hadn't told her because he didn't want to be the one to let her down, or if he wanted to kill Legion so _badly_ he'd lead a girl into false hope.

Again he felt the prick of something like his long forgotten conscience. Again the apathy won out, and the feeling was washed aside and replaced by steady indifference.

But that didn't mean he could just let her _die_.

"I could start picking them off from here. Make a dent in their numbers."

"And then they swarm us and hack us to little pieces with machetes," Monroe said brightly, her eyes wide and pleasant, as if she were smiling underneath the mask, "Just get to position, alright? We can - I can do this. Don't worry." She shifted uncomfortably, picking up her small supply satchel and slinging it over her shoulder. She started off towards the camp before he could say another word, and though he probably should have tried harder to stop her, he didn't.

Boone frowned to himself, a frown that only deepened as her little floating robot bobbed along pleasantly behind her.

This was _not_ going to work.

As soon as he had lost sight of her, he didn't waste anymore time. He rounded the ridge that the little camp had sat below, stepping up onto it and taking a quick glance through his rifle to see how much room he had before the encampment. Taking note, he began a quick, quiet run forward, long strides carrying him up the hills he had plotted out earlier. The Raid Camp was close to the south, past a cluster of hills that kept it hidden from any the Rangers of Station Charlie. He aimed to make the hills that had protected them now become the keys to their damnation.

He was out of breath by the time he reached the crest of the tall ridge behind the Raid Camp, sweating through his shirt from the steep climb. He didn't let the fatigue the run had brought on delay the precaution of laying on the ground, flat on the stomach and hopefully unseen by the guards below. The camp was mostly as he predicted it would be - quiet and still, save for the milling of a handful of guards and the crackling of fires still lit from the day. He lay now on the ridge looking down on the supply tent, and the captures bound near the fire. On the ground below that rise, he knew Monroe would be moving from tent to tent, placing dynamite - though God knew where she had found that much dynamite - near enough to each other to cause a chain of explosions.

For someone who could barely fire a gun, she knew a lot about blowing things up. He wasn't sure if that was comforting or disturbing, but either way there were going to be a lot of Legion who went to sleep that night and never awoke in the morning.

His role was one he was accustomed to - holding position, and waiting. When men began spilling out of the tents on the upper ridge, running towards the explosions, he would need to start picking them off. He felt his heart thud with an anticipation he hadn't felt in what seemed like years. His fingers twitched with the need to _kill_ everyone of the bastards in the camp below, his mind echoing with the last pale vestiges of emotion he had.

The adrenaline was coursing within him long before he heard the hollow pop of a grenade launcher firing. What followed was a chain of explosions that sang out in a rhythmic arrangement of dirt and death and the screams of lesser men below him. Legionaries were screaming, some in pain, some in anger, some calling for help and others crying out warnings. They knew there now to be an intruder among their ranks, but many were marching too far into the arms of death for it to matter anymore.

Boone smiled.

He found the first, stepping bleary eyed from his tent, casting a glance towards the growing chaos of the camp. A young man, probably just out of his teens, his hair cut neatly and short, his face clean shaven. He wore the dressings of a recruit, less armored around the torso but still distinctly the salvaged remains of Pre-war athletic gear. He took one step out of his tent, his mouth curling to form words of inquiry.

_Pop-clink._

The boy doubled over, a blossom of crimson spreading across his neck that matched his armor, his leg kicking erratically even as he lay face down in the dirt.

The next was a Decanus - an officer. The wind rustled the feathers that covered his helmet, his face hidden by cloth and sunglasses. He wall pulling free a machete from it's scabbard, beginning a walk that was quickly turning into a run, towards the slope that would lead to the tents below. He was shouting to some of the other men, trying to get them organized, raising his machete in a gesture to the camps below.

_Pop-clink._

Feathers broke away and scattered into the air as a hole tore through the back of his head, exiting roughly through the top of his mouth and tearing his jaw into a bloody mess.

The next was easily found - one of the recruits that had been standing near the Decanus, receiving orders. He wore a motorcycle helmet with a single red stripe down it's center, his face half hidden by red cloth that rose from his neck. His eyes went wide as the Decanus fell limp to the ground, his legs stiffening in fear. The first syllable of the word 'sniper' curled his upper lip, his head swiveling towards the hill Boone lay hidden on, desperate and searching and far too slow to react.

_Pop-clink._

The word he had been yelling turned midway into a guttural scream as he fell stiffly back. The bullet had cut clean through his knee cap, leaving his left leg mangled and useless just above the brown boots he wore. His screaming continued, desperate and pleading, as he tried in vain to drag himself towards his fellow soldiers.

Two recruits responded to his cries.

_Pop-clink. Pop-clink._

Two dead lay atop of one dying.

The blast of the grenade launcher firing off made him frown. Swiveling his scope away from the man bleeding out on the sand, he looked down in the direction of the lower ridge. The split of a red light announced the little eyebot's contribution to the battle as two Legionaries charged him and Monroe, the girl buying herself space with the sloppy application of her grenade launcher. The area was too dark to begin firing blind unless he wanted to waste ammunition, but the little eyebot was firing at timed intervals that he could make use of. Each blast lit the area in pale relief and cast a macabre scene of men blown apart in their sleep.

The sight followed one of the Legionaries lazily, slowly matching the path he was taking, leading the shot out before him and timing the glow of the bot's laser. Just as the laser lit the scene again, Boone popped the shot, laying another Legionary to the ground with grim satisfaction. He turned the scope back to the scene before the tent, waiting for more to come out, waiting for more shots to be fired and blood to be spilled.

And after an hour had passed and together they had killed them all, he found the only thing inside of him was the desire to kill more.

...

A massacre.

Heavenly's fingers grasped a fistful of feathers and ripped the Decanus mask from her face. Tears stung her eyes as she surveyed the scene before her, the massacre she had created. The mask dropped from fingers she could no longer feel, her breath coming in ragged gasps, though not now from the strain of the fight. All around her was the smell of blood and burnt flesh, all she could see were bodies of men she had killed, laying in piles and uneven rows, laying bloody and broken amid the tattered remains of their tents. Hev's hand rose to her mouth to block out the smell of it, wishing she could block out the _memory_ of it, and did all she could to hold back tears.

After seeing the carnage of Station Charlie, after hearing the cold indifference of the message the Legion had left there, she had hoped the guilt of her actions wouldn't catch her. But even with the vivid memory of Charlie fresh in her mind, this scene before her cut deeper. The death at the station had been unjust, grotesque, a bloody punctuation at the end of her first encounter with the Legion. It was no less a massacre than what she stood by now - but it hadn't been one she had helped _create._

She stood now on the upper ridge, among the bodies of men Boone had sniped from the ridge behind her. The death around her was overwhelming, and the scene below was worse. In her mind she could still hear the echoes of her actions, the screaming intensity of death and pain, and no justification would silence them. What does a man have to do to deserve being blown apart in his sleep? A few short hours ago it had seemed like the only way, and now it seemed like the coward's way. She could rationalize that meeting these men face to face in a fight that she won fairly would have left them no less dead, only that it would have given them a chance to kill her _back_. And she was not so delusional that she believed she could have won the fight that was laid out before her - they would have been outnumbered. Outnumbered by _a lot_.

And given the chance, the Legion would have spared no compassion for them, given no ear to the idea of a fair fight. They would have been killed. If the Legion had found _them_ sleeping, they would have done just what Heavenly now hated herself for doing. And they would have felt no similar moral qualms about it.

She wanted to believe she was better than that. Wanted to believe she still held the upper hand in morality against slavers and murders. And maybe her struggle with her conscience _was_ her way of feeling better - they, after all, would have felt nothing at all. She and the sniper would have been just two more notches on a belt that had been whittled down to gnarled remnants.

"She's not here."

The voice was calm, just as much as he ever was. If killing a whole damn _camp_ of men wouldn't pull even a trace of emotion from him, she was beginning to wonder what _would_. At least here, however, his fixed composure made logical sense. He had been trained to be collected under the pressure of death and violence, and his levelheaded attitude was crucial to his position as a sniper. Still, it irked her, despite her better logic, that the only other person who should have felt _something_ in the wake of the carnage before them felt _nothing_.

She didn't voice her annoyance. She didn't allow a hint of it in her tone. There would be no point; he wouldn't tell her anything she hadn't already summated on her own. That the Legion had to die in order for their slaves to live, that the most effective way to do that was to kill them while they slept, and that he had been trained to remain unaffected in the face of bloodshed. All were points she knew, understood, yet couldn't bring herself to believe.

It was like a horrible nightmare playing out. Actions she performed but had no control over. Like it wasn't really _her_ doing these things, killing these men, creating a trail of fire and death and burning it through the heat of the desert.

"I know."

"They got what was coming to them." He spoke dispassionately in answer, but she knew he meant the words to be comforting. Or at least, she was pretty sure they were supposed to be. Again it seemed Boone was a better person than even he realized, and was never quite sure how to express it. Strange now to think the man who could coldly snipe a dozen confused Legionaries could offer her words of comfort an hour later.

Heavenly turned and offered him a weak smile, but he seemed unaffected by it. She let it drop, casting her gaze over the camp and towards the retreating forms of the men they had saved. They were dressed like Powder Gangers, which was terribly ironic and hilarious in hindsight. Hev had risked her life to save men who, a few days before, would have tried to kill her on sight. Stella was nowhere to be seen, if she had even been the woman the Legion referred to on the holotape. All the overwhelming death and violence for a cause that might have been lost before she took that first step into Charlie's comm station. She shifted in the Legion armor she still wore, wishing it didn't smell so strongly of blood. Or that she wasn't too weary to change out of it.

She looked now to Boone, but could see the reflection of the scene behind her in the lenses of his sunglasses. Pursing her lips, she gestured to the Gangers, "Did they say where they were picked up?"

ED whirred softly. Boone's eyes swept over Hev's shoulder, out across the campsite torn apart below them, "Nipton. A force attacked the town." Something like anger flashed just beneath his eyes, his face twitching in a display of emotion that left much quicker than it came, "They're pushing further into our territory. Testing the limits. They shouldn't be operating out here at all."

Hev turned away, looking back to the bodies that surrounded them on all sides. So much death in an effort to spare so little life. War was such a stupid, pointless thing - Caesar sat on a throne somewhere and told younger men to go out and kill, go out and die, push his borders wider, rewrite them with their blood. The people of Nipton were now suffering because of one man's lunacy, his thirst for power, and men died on both sides because of the conflict. Heavenly felt her jaw clench slightly, anger overcoming her as easily as remorse had, her tone serious and flat, "Then I'm going to Nipton."

She had expected an argument, or his departure. She should have known, by now, that she could probably get Boone to follow her anywhere if there was the promise of Legion who needed holes in their heads. She didn't get a dispute; his _tone_ didn't even change, "Alright." He took a moment, considered, and then added, "I don't know what you're hoping to find."

She turned back to him, finding he still wasn't looking at her. His eyes swept the tents behind her, as if relishing in the slaughter. She pressed her lips together in a line, speaking up to his taller form, "We should see if we can help. There could be more slaves, or people wounded."

As she spoke, his eyes finally fell and fixed on her, his features remaining neutral. For a moment, a glimmer of emotion flinched passed his face, and he seemed to be on the verge of speaking again, but he didn't. Remaining silent, he nodded his assent, and turned away to resume what she had observed him doing before - checking the bodies for anything useful. Silence from him was hardly out of the ordinary, but the sort of tension that hung now in the air was definitely something new. Clearing her throat, she felt her brow furrow at it, speaking as he moved from corpse to corpse.

"What is it? Is there something ..." She paused, some small measure of recognition spilling over her, "You don't think there will be anyone left to save?"

Boone paused at one of the bodies in a kneel, not turning to face her. After a moment, she heard a soft sigh, and he pushed himself slowly to his feet, suddenly looking much older and tired than he was. Finally bringing her gaze back to her, he shook his head in the negative, the only sound between them the slow crackle of the campfires. His head drooped and he looked away, pulling his sunglasses off, massaging the bridge of his nose with a finger and a thumb. His voice came out weary, finally, soft and even and impassive as ever, "No. Nipton's lost."

His hand left from the bridge of his nose and his eyes swept over to her once more. His hands busied themselves with cleaning the lenses of his sunglasses on his shirt, "I'll go with you. Kill everyone of the sons of bitches we find there." Finishing, he raised the glasses, replacing them on his face, his voice remaining constant and unwavering in it's apathy, "But I don't want you to think we are going to find anyone there who we can save."

She felt her knees quake at the calmness of his claim, at the placidity of it, and her hands curled into fists. Like a spoiled child, she felt tired and sad and _angry_ at him all at once, a cocktail of emotions that refreshed the tears in her eyes. Turning away briskly, she shook her head in defiance as she stared out over the carnage below them. There _had_ to be survivors in Nipton - there _had _to be. It was an entire _town_ filled with women and children and old people and there was just _no logical way_ her mind could accept that everyone there was dead. She kept her opinion to herself, again, falling uncharacteristically quiet as she looked from one dead body to the next, studying the grotesque scene she had created. She couldn't go on, neither back home nor onwards to Vegas, knowing she had caused so much death and saved so little life.

If she saved just _one_ person in Nipton, then all this death might make sense. It might have all been linked to a purpose. A road she wouldn't have traveled had she not committed such atrocities.

Night was falling hard on the desert, and they would have to rest before making it to Novac. Boone especially, she imagined, after having been awake the entirety of the night before. She mused briefly over spending the night there in the Raid Camp, but decided that had stupid written all over it - without needing to ask Boone his tactical opinion on the matter. The Legion would certainly have patrols out, or coming in, or slaving parties combing the desert. As soon as any of those returned, they would be in for another battle that Heavenly just didn't have the strength for. Rising her Pip-Boy up, she turned the screen on, flicking through some of the locations nearby. A marker for a Ranch sat to their south, in between their location and the road to Nipton.

It was a good of try as any, she reasoned, for shelter before reaching Nipton. God only knew what they would find once they arrived there.

Turning back towards the sniper, she found him starting towards her, crossing from the Legion supply tent at the south end of the camp. He carried in his hands two boxes of ammo, heavy and clinking faintly with his movements, and he held them out to her as soon as he came in close enough. Taking them in both hands, she glanced down at the marking on the outside of the case - .357 magnums - then blinked up to him quizzically. She wasn't by any means a gun expert, but she was fairly certain that a '.357' was ammunition for a handgun.

"For the Repeater." He corrected, as though reading her thoughts on the matter. Then, further arising suspicion of his telepathic abilities, he continued, "We need to get moving. Scouts will patrol any area with a Raid Camp in it. They see this, they're likely to report back to Cottonwood - and then we'll have much worse than a couple Decanus and a bunch of Recruits."

"Yeah, I hadn't thought of that." She muttered under her breath, taking the ammunition and tucking it back into her satchel. Looking towards the south, back towards the road, she continued evenly, "There's a farm, to the south, along the road. Do you think we can stay there for the night? Or do you think we should just head straight to Nipton."

He fidgeted with his rifle strap, his gaze following hers out towards the road. Making a noncommittal sound in his throat, his voice was soft and even, "One more night isn't going to make a difference." He said conclusively, beginning a slow walk towards the road. Purposefully slow, she wagered, to ensure she would be able to keep up. She answered with a faster stride, catching up and encouraging them both to move quickly.

She didn't want to find out what the Legion sent after those who killed soldiers in their sleep.

...

It hadn't taken her long to recover from whatever she had been dealing with back at the camp.

There was something to be said about that kind of resilience, even if it would be short lived in the wastes, and depressing as hell for her when it was finally crushed. She chattered incessantly about whatever came to mind, usually not even bothering with waiting for a response. So much so that for most of the walk to the abandoned Ranch he hadn't been sure if she had been speaking to him or her _robot_. Considering she was getting more or less the same amount of conversation from either, he supposed she had determined it not to matter.

He had seen things like it before, in his service; troopers nervous about battle who would talk to keep their minds off what was really frightening them. She chattered about her family and her home and the vital dietary supplements brahmin needed. She tracked her journey all the way back to Goodsprings and her first real battle against the convicts who had escaped from the Correctional Facility. She even mentioned the more recent event at Primm with the Powder Gangers and the timely rescue from the robot that floated behind them. The last was a somewhat fantastic story that was hard to imagine - at best - but she didn't come off to him as a liar. His opinion of her had changed very little from their initial meeting; a naive civilian with no place out in the wastes.

The fact he was encouraging her suicide run against the Legion for his own personal gain was not lost on him either. If he was a better man, he would have told her to just go the hell _home_ and leave the Legion fighting to the NCR. He wanted to believe he was still with her for more altruistic reasons than the dark truths that beckoned inside of him. They had just reached the Ranch when the struggle with this reasoning was brought into the light, as she paused between stories for long enough to look slowly over to him.

"You're not really helping me because you want to help me, are you?" She tilted her head, her features remaining neutral - she didn't appear hurt or angry or accusatory, simply curious, "You're doing it because of this vendetta with the Legion, right?"

"I don't know." He answered neutrally, as honest an answer as he could find, "A little of both."

As much as he wanted to believe otherwise, inside it felt like he _was_ only going along with her because of all the dead Legionaries her path promised. It wasn't like he had much _better_ to do in any case - besides sitting around Novac waiting to die. He knew his time was coming fast, knew his punishment hadn't been concluded. Maybe following this girl, who already bore one scar on her head of death passing her over, would ultimately lead him to the fate that was awaiting him. He had an odd feeling that this was how it was supposed to be - that he _should_ be following her, that the journey down her path would finally lead to the end of his own.

Monroe smiled small and nodded to him, turned to the Ranch door and pressed it open to a musty room. A dirty bed was shoved against a corner, and an ancient stove sat in disrepair on the side wall. There was a shelf with some empty tin cans and sarsaparilla bottles littered the floor, suggesting the place had been squatted in recently, but abandoned long ago. Monroe stepped in and shuffled bottles away from their path, eying the shack first with disdain, and then slow acceptance, "At least it's shelter, right?"

Boone nodded faintly, examining the rusted out stove, not looking up as he spoke to her, "I'll push the stove against the door, keep out any unwanted visitors. Take the bed, I have a sleeping bag in my duffle." Monroe sat still on the bed and nodded to him, apparently too tired to insist he take the bed or any other such nonsense. Apparently too tired to even change out of the oversized attire she had stolen off a dead man. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see her shift uncomfortably on the bed, biting down on her lower lip, apparently nervous about something unspoken.

He didn't ask; he wasn't very good with social graces. And besides that, if being married had taught him anything, it was that women were mysteries best left unsolved.

He saw her drop back onto the bed, laying flat on her stomach and still covered in the Legion's armor. He frowned, turning to her fully and was prepared to ask if she needed assistance removing it. Luckily, he nixed that idea before it got off the ground - he wasn't _so_ bad at social graces that he didn't see the idiocy in a man asking a woman he had just met if he could help her remove her _clothing_. Especially when this was coming _after_ he had locked them both in an abandoned shack far from civilization.

Through some miracle, his social ineptitude hadn't frightened her off entirely. Best _not_ try the luck with that and say something really ridiculous. Instead he set to work moving the stove away from the wall, taking opposite corners in a strong grip and grunting as he pulled it closer to the door. It squealed against the metal floor of the shack, it's movement causing bottles to skitter across the floor and clank against the far wall. Monroe didn't move, even with all the noise, simply cradled her head on her satchel and lay motionless on her stomach.

He was content with the silence; he wasn't terribly suited for speaking to people. After everything they had been through tonight, and everything they would go through in the morning, she would need all the rest she could get. And seeing as she was sleeping in the oversized armor of a man who had been burned to death by a _laser_, he didn't imagine she would be sleeping terribly _soundly_.

"Oh, hey." Her voice perked up pleasantly, and he looked back just as he finished arranging the stove at the door. She still lay on her stomach, but now her head was turned towards him, the weary circles under her eyes standing out in sharp relief against the pale skin of her face. Even in the dim light she looked exhausted, but her voice came out congenially, "Thanks for the gun." There was a pause and she looked up, as if trying to remember something, "Actually ... Just ... Thank you. You know. For me not being _dead_."

Boone watched her impassively for a few more silent moments, his hands still trailing against the cool metal of the stove. His face was unaffected, but something stirred inside him that he couldn't quite place. He'd been so accustomed to feeling _nothing_ that the first indication of some paltry emotion was alien to him. He was almost certain it was just the remaining traces of guilt over leading her to what could certainly be her death. If he were any measure of a decent human being, if anything was remaining within him of the man that Carla had loved, he would march this girl back to the NCR border and demand she never leave the safety of it's confines. Whatever feeling murmured faintly in the back of his mind, he was sure it was merely a fragment of his conscience edging at the corners of long dead morality.

But maybe it was something else too. Maybe he felt, for once, like he was doing something _good_.

That notion was discarded as quickly as it was proposed; he wasn't looking for redemption. All the good deeds in the world wouldn't erase the hurt he had caused. And it wouldn't stop the hurt that sought him.

"Don't worry about it." He muttered, voice dull and flat. It would be better, in any case, if she didn't want to thank him. It would be better if she wanted nothing to do with him. Because if she ever did, the hurt would be seeking _her_ next.

And it seemed Doctor Monroe had more than enough hurt in her future already.


	9. Chapter 9

Long black rivers of smoke coiled up into the sky, a shifting black-gray screen that stood in sharp contrast to the light blue of the late morning. She had taken to glancing to her Pip-boy every few minutes, albeit now a bit hopelessly, reassuring herself that they were, indeed, still heading towards Nipton. That the smoke billowing just beyond the rugged terrain was in the direction her map indicated the town to be. She hadn't given up on the slow dying hope that perhaps what they were seeing was the signs of cooking fires; really _black_, acrid cooking fires.

But hoping for that was similar to hoping that, somehow, they would find Stella there. And Heavenly had, at the very least, given up on that bit of foolishness.

Her mind limped painfully and struggled with the idea that any military force would be able to wipe an entire settlement from the map. These were no longer the anarchistic days soon after the war; no longer was the wasteland restricted to barely surviving huddles of people, struggling against barren desolateness of the present. The NCR had _cities_, it had an army. Civilization had reared it's head back west, taken a long, sure stride out of California and cast it's sight in hope for the adjoining states. To step from the lands of her home into the chaos she now struggled through felt such a stark difference it was like comparing wading and drowning. Desperately she held onto the hope that Nipton would be fractured, but note entirely broken. That there would still be something there to save.

The fact that she was getting _used_ to being dirty _all_ of the time was something she coped with the failing bits of her humor. The Legion armor that she still wore rubbed irritation across her sore back. She had somehow fallen asleep in the heavy, overbearing garment, despite the fact it smelled like sweat and blood - someone _else's_ sweat and blood. She had _been_ that exhausted yesterday, and that morning when she had woken up still in it she had felt too awkward to ask Boone to kindly step outside so that she could change. The fact that he had already been awake when she had finally arose was odd enough to her - it made her wonder if he even _slept_ at all. Paired with his personality, she was honestly beginning to expect he was a terribly human appearing robot.

She could hear the crunch of his boots against the sand behind her, and it was about the only sound Boone had _made_ since they had woken up and departed their dilapidated shelter. At first, when the grim truth that awaited her still seemed to be barely brushing the horizon, she had chatted lightly to him. She had found it was much the same as speaking to ED as she got more or less equal responses from both of them - though, ED at least, would _beep_ every now and then. She couldn't claim to mind too terribly though; she hadn't fully realized the creeping loneliness she had been feeling before the sniper joined her company, or the constant fear of being by oneself in unknown territories. And speaking to him, even if she wouldn't have gotten a response if she _paid_ him for one, was much better than brooding in silence; than dreading the things they were sure to find.

One thing was certain, were she ever to make it home; she was going to write a letter to President Kimball and let him know that First Recon training worked. It worked very, very well. Half the time Boone fired his gun she hadn't even heard him _draw_ it, let alone perceived around them anything that appeared remotely threatening. Somehow Boone just _knew_, and before her hand could even brush the stock of the Repeater he had given her, there would be a pop that echoed across the wasteland and a rustle as he re-shouldered his weapon.

_The last thing you'll never see._ To think that she had _laughed_ at that. That she had thought it _corny_. It had only taken two hours in the wastes to ensure she would never, _ever_ laugh at it again.

They had just reached a desolate railroad crossing, ancient, swollen wood and chipped paint stretched before them as arms blocking their way. It looked so forlorn and abandoned that it seemed an omen; a warning, to stall her progress forward. As she moved to step around the orange and white painted planks that lay in her path, the wind kicked up and she caught a scent that, nonsensically, reminded her of Primm. Heavenly took a deeper breath, pausing just on the tracks and glancing back to Boone in puzzlement. Unable to reason what had made her think of that, she brought her gaze away from the sniper and back towards Nipton, and towards the town that had beckoned to her faintly from her memories.

Beyond the railroad crossing, and beyond a cheery, aged blue sign with little flowers on it, she could just see the dull glow of the fires. A smeared hue of orange lay over the town before her, the tall piles of ash and coals having burned down from what must have once been a roaring flame. From her point on the railroad tracks, she could see the entrance of Nipton, the dirt that had, over the years, been pressed into a thin layer of crust over the asphalt of the road that led into town. And from the ashes that swirled with the slow press of the wind, from the crackling embers of the fires that still burned, and from the emptiness and silence that wrapped around her on all sides, Heavenly felt the last tattered remnants of her hope slip away.

The wind came for her again, and this time she knew why she recognized the scent. Why it reminded her of Primm.

Because Primm had been the only place she had ever smelled burning flesh.

They stepped through the railroad crossing and the blue sign that announced they had just passed the state line into California. Heavenly felt no slight reassurance that, technically, she stood once more in her home state. The hell that awaited her ahead was no closer to her home than she was to the sun, and despite the sunlight that spilled over this place, all she could perceive on all sides was the darkness of the hearts of men. The air she breathed held the dry scratch of smoke, leaving her throat hoarse and her eyes wet. Ashes hung lazily in the air, swirling with their movements through it, dancing eerily with each gentle sway of the wind. Heavy black birds hung above them, circling slowly, calling out barked cries of mourning to the empty sockets of skulls that had long ago cracked under the press of flame.

A sign sat on wagon wheels to her right, and it read 'Nipton'.

A flag was staked amongst the bones of slain innocents, and it bore a bull that told her 'Legion'.

She must have stood at that sign, staring up at the gold emblazoned bull that waved crimson tatters into the wind, for more than a few minutes. Smoke brushed past her face and made her eyes burn and tear, but she couldn't remove her gaze from it, couldn't blink and stall the revelation. She must have been caught, entranced, because Boone stepped forward and she heard his voice come out softly.

"We should go." He had every right to tell her, 'I told you so', but he didn't. His voice was terse and curt as ever, but his tone seemed to be measured a bit more gently. As though he were trying, albeit unsuccessfully, to comfort her. Heavenly found herself unable to move, even in the face of his consideration.

Her eyes swept down to the fire, to the blackened remains of the people that had been piled there, and felt a wail build up in her throat that she couldn't allow herself to release. She remained there, wordlessly, feeling in her mind as though she should have been introspective about the carnage before her. As though she should have been trying to deduce a logical reason behind the actions that led to _this_ result. She could find neither excuse nor truth within her to justify the atrocities that had taken place, but she couldn't even bring herself to seek one. It was all too much; the bodies, the death, the _smell_ and the flames. Nothing inside of her could have prepared her for what she saw in that fire, nor what she saw when she stepped around it.

She hadn't spoken, and Boone hadn't attempted again. He followed her wordlessly as she rounded the first of the great bonfires, her boots smudged with ashes and stepping beside bones that had popped and scattered from the coals. She didn't know what was pressing her forward, she didn't know - as Boone had said a mere day ago - what she was hoping to find. Hope was such a far off and imprecise thing that she couldn't imagine herself ever having held it close. A coppery smell of old blood tinged the smoke that burned her nostrils, carrying with it faint hints of decay. If death itself could ever have been described as a physical place she could visit, she would swear that she now stood in it's confines. She moved mechanically and silently, towards the main street of the town and deeper into the laboring heart of the beast. Passed the maw and down the gullet, unable to stop her descent, unable to turn back the way she had come, like a bird lost in flight.

Heavenly rounded the corner, feeling Boone's presence on her heels. Her breath hitched in her throat and she felt the need to vomit and cry and _scream_ all at once. If seeing the true character of Jeannie May Crawford had been a window into the heart of evil, she now strode into it's tastefully decorated living room. And someone had left the _mints_ out for her. Somewhere in the back of her mind she could hear herself laughing dryly with the satisfaction that she had, in fact, been right about there being survivors.

At the very least, there were people here still alive. But Boone had been right, too; there was nothing before her that could be _saved_.

The telephone poles that lined the street had been stripped and shaped into makeshift crosses, and from those crosses had been hung - something. Something that she hadn't the words to describe. Should she be referring to them as people, since they were still alive? Or as bodies, since they were far too close to death to ever step back over the line into _living_ again? The men and women who hung from the crosses sat precariously on the line between dying and dead. Their state too close to either to tell one from the other. Their bodies were broken and bruised, their skin dry and cracked from overexposure to the sun, their eyes listless and staring as they waited for death.

But they hadn't _died_ yet.

And if they had been dead, if they had _been_ dead, she might have been able to handle that. If she was staring at dual rows of corpses strung up as some grotesque display of subjugation, then she may have been able to turn and run out of town. Against her own knowledge, at first, she had tried desperately to believe that they _were_ dead. But then there were the movements - the random twitch of a finger, the muttered whine from a dry throat, the nod of a head long since lost to lunacy and hopelessness. The people before her weren't alive, but weren't fully dead - strung along some wicked middle ground, dragged through hell before they could even pull their final breath.

Heavenly didn't know when she had fallen to her knees, didn't know how long her eyes had been draining tears. Ashes clung to her as she wept amongst them, studying each and every body on every lackluster monument to depravity. That something as horrible as what was before her could happen at all was bad enough - the thought that _someone_ had done it, purposefully, boggled her mind to the point of hysteria. It was all _too much_ and she didn't know if she was ever going to be pulling herself out of those ashes, away from that blood. She didn't know how she could walk away from the people who lay strapped to crosses and teetering a line between life and death.

"We need to go."

Boone's words were calm and even and they _needed_ to go but at that point she was ready to turn and scream at him. She wanted to tell him, _force_ him to feel something in the repugnance of all of what lay before them. She wanted to shake him until emotion spilled out, any emotion, as she couldn't stop the jumble of hers from doing so. She felt her chest tighten with the need of it, the need to vent to _anything_ that could hear her, the need to scream and cry and make it all a horrible nightmare or a sick joke. And she felt the need to know _why_, as desperate and grasping as that was; she needed to _understand_. As if understanding would make all of it incrementally better.

"Monroe." His fingers pressed into her shoulder, and something about how tight his grip was dug into the remorse and mingled confusion that fogged her mind. She looked up to him, blankly, and to her surprise she could see him clearly - she had somehow stopped crying. Boone didn't look disturbed; he didn't look _anything_, just somewhat insistent. She blinked to him, wondering vaguely what had suddenly made their departure so important - he had seemed content to let her whine in the sand a mere moment ago.

"Monroe. They are still _here._" The word sent prickles down her arms, "We have to _go._" There again was that steady insistence, the impassive importance he put to the words, trying to get through to her as a parent would a stubborn child. His fingers bit into her shoulder, tighter again, sending a ripple of ignored pain through the wounds in her back. Heavenly turned her head back to the way she had been looking, but was finally able to look past the macabre sequence of the dead and the dying. There she saw the crimson spotted frames of men, of living men, standing among the wreckage of the town they had destroyed. Knee deep in the burning dead and the barely living and looking as though they felt right at home.

Boone gave up on speaking; his hand traveled to her bicep and he dragged her bodily to her feet, no longer giving a care to niceties. She stared at the men in front of the town hall, spread in a loose line around a man with a fur hood pulled over his head. She stared at them blankly, dumbly, barely noticing the stumble of her feet as Boone began to drag her backwards. Heavenly stared at the man in the middle, the man in the hood and wide black glasses, and it seemed _he_ was staring back at _her._

"Wait." Her voice was clearer than she had expected it to be, and far more calm than she could have possibly hoped for. Boone paused, his grip on her loosening just enough so she could turn to face him. She didn't know how convincing she would look with tear trails striping her cheeks and red streaking her eyes, but she met his gaze firmly nonetheless. "I ... I just ... We can't just _leave_."

"We aren't going to attack them head on in broad daylight." He said simply, to the point, looking over her shoulder to the men who had murdered a town, "They've already seen us. We need a plan."

Heavenly turned from him, and spotted again the man in the sunglasses. Spotted those who stood at attention around him. She felt herself drawn to him, drawn forward to the stare and to the casual confidence in his stance. She didn't know what she wanted from him, didn't know what she could possibly be hoping to find in his answers. But she knew she couldn't step away from this town without finding some reason behind it all, a logical explanation that could justify the horror she waded through. If she left without knowing then she would never really leave. If she left, she may as well strap herself to one of those crosses and wait for death under the unforgiving sun; because in her mind, that's where she would always be. That's what she would always be wondering.

What does one do to deserve such a fate.

What sort of man could order it done.

"I ... I have a plan." She said, her voice quiet, her steps just as so as she moved away from the sniper with her robot in tow, "Just ... Just wait here."

Curiosity pulled her forward, dragged her as undertow into the black depths where true evil resided. She could almost feel wave after wave of despair crash around her as she stepped down the grisly aisle that divided two long rows of nightmares. Each step brought more clarity to her mind, serenity spawned of confusion, banishing fear in it's simplicity. As she neared the men with spears and the tall man with the wide black glasses, she found herself wondering, vaguely, what the _hell_ she was doing. But that was the last vestige of doubt, crashing and burning in the brighter fire of dedication, of cause.

Each turned to regard her, more with scowls than simple apathy, but none moved upon her as they had back at the Raid Camp. These men seemed a different sort; more trained, more disciplined. Each head raised and stared, but not a single lip moved in inquiry. They stood still as the girl in the armor that had come from one of their dead approached them, her quirky, rusted eyebot floating at her heels. She came to a stop before them, as the road widened and spread to either side, it's forward progress ended by a large building at it's head. The man in the center, who wore a hood she could now see was the skinned head of a wolf, kept his arms crossed and his stance relaxed. He watched her for a moment with an intent hidden by the shades he wore, an expression that could almost be described as bordering_ bored_ on his face.

"You see the carnage around you," His words were soft, cultured, not at all the vehement spewing of the monster she imagined him to be, "And you see us," He began a slow walk forward from the steps of the hall, measured pace confident and certain, "And yet you still come forward." His words were so soft, so soothing, that she nearly couldn't hear him over the crackle of the fires behind him. "Why is that?" He spoke as though he had no untoward intent within the inquiry; he spoke as though his curiosity had honestly been piqued.

Heavenly didn't stammer, much to her surprise. She knew exactly why she had come forward, as asinine as it sounded. "I wanted to know why." Her words, too, came simple and to the point. No longer was her voice screaming or crying or far too gone into shock to speak. Some hidden strength - if it could be called that - had simmered in her chest, forced her path to intersect his. As absurd as it sounded, the fear of death had subsided in lieu of the desperate need to make sense of what surrounded her.

"Why." He stated simply, and glanced shortly around to the bodies - both those that burned in piles and those that hung half living above them. "You think there need be a reason?" He stated it as a true question, and not an assumption of truth. Heavenly looked slowly along the blackened bones in front of the town hall, and felt the urge to know rise up within her again.

"Yes." She stated, and shook her head almost imperceptibly, "All of these people. All of this effort. This isn't just a victory. This is a message." The words came easily to her, as cold logic always did. Her emotions wailed just behind the veil of her ebbing strength, barely held by the gates of her yearning for the truth.

A hint of a smile tugged at the corner of the man's mouth, and his arms resumed their fold over his chest. His voice was smooth and eloquent again, but sounded almost congratulatory - as if she had made some sort of impression with a simple sentence, "The woman thinks herself a scholar, then?" He proposed, taking another step forward to look her up and down, "Clothed in the bloodied garments of my kin, walking through the masterpiece of my work, stepping aside those who died for lesser sins - and she comes to me expecting an answer." He made a soft sound in his throat, what could have been a laugh had it not been so controlled and quiet, so tempered and defined, "Your perception, however, does you credit, woman. And the Legion does not waste potential needlessly."

He waved his arm passed her, gesturing to the town and all the horrible feelings it evoked in her. Heavenly followed the movement, glancing again to her surroundings and all they conveyed, although she didn't need to. She doubted that the things she had seen here would ever be fully erased from her mind. "I want you to drink in all you see here," His calm words brought her eyes back to him, her throat feeling more parched and rough in that moment than it had since she stepped into town, "I want you to memorize every detail. And then, I want you to spread the word of what has transpired here. Of the lessons the Legion has taught."

Heavenly stared at him, her brow faintly furrowed. This had been a message, as she had surmised - and he wanted _her_ to be the one to pass it along. A gruesome note passing from bloodied hands to clean ones, spreading the smear of sin across her curled fingers.

"I don't understand." She spoke softly, and watched his arms fall, his attention drawn back to her, "_Why_. Why did you do this? How could you murder all these people?"

Now a true smile spread across his face, and it was toothy and cruel and made him look all the more like the wolf he wore on his head, "Quite easily." He spoke evenly, then folded his arms back over his chest, "They outnumbered us, but they didn't rise and fight back. Even as loved ones were dragged away to be beaten, burned and killed. Nipton was a place rife with sin. And it serves more meaning in it's death than it ever did in it's life." The calm tune of his voice faded away, and the crackle of the fire rushed in to replace it. She stared at him openly, her mouth slightly agape, her words rising into her mind and flowing through her throat in the same insistent hunt for meaning.

"You call these people sinners," Heavenly's voice still came calm, somehow, in the face of the what he was spewing. The man seemed to straddle a line somewhere between madness and genius, and she couldn't quite decide which side to place him on. She felt a building shock as the slow realization came to her that she didn't wish to accept; this man was _intelligent_. Brutally so. And yet he had condoned - had ordered - the smoking ruins of brutality that lay in bloodied heaps before her. She had lost her meaning in the face of it all, lost her words and found herself scrambling to collect them, to remember why she had come. "You call _them_ sinners?" It had been a simple fact the first time it was stated, but became a question as her mind turned it, over and over again.

He tilted his head back and to the right, staring over the burning pit of tires and broken bodies, an inflection affecting his voice that made it seem he was admiring his work, "This was a town of _whores_. They expected a pittance for the heads of the profligates who would gather here. They arranged a trap, and only too late found themselves caught within it." He turned back to her, and his smile was small but it was _there_ and it turned her blood to ice, "Nipton once served all comers. Now they serve none."

"But this isn't..." She felt her resolve crumbling within her. These were not the answers she had been seeking. This was madness colored with tact and layered over by a mind too cruel to be as clever as it was. She didn't know what to make of the man, didn't know how to respond to him. "How can one sin justify another? How can you condemn these people and then commit atrocities as unforgivable as their own? This isn't _right_."

His smile spread wider, a slow and frightening sight to behold, and again he spoke with that tone he had used before. Like she had impressed him, like he could find some use for her, "And you believe _yourself_ to be a better judge?"

Heavenly paused, her mouth hanging open as she struggled to find the answer to that. Hadn't she just, not two days ago, helped Boone kill a woman because of _her_ sins? Hadn't she just answered one crime with another, dealt a death to balance perceived depravity? Hadn't she stood where this man was now, looked upon _her_ work, and felt no remorse for what she had done? Was this law, was this _order_, in some barbaric, despotic form?

"I am Vulpes Inculta, woman." He spoke smoothly, breaking through the torrent of her doubts and taking a step back, away from her, "Spread my message and I will see to it that your potential is not squandered, as the wasteland would. Or," He took another step back, and a knowing smile spread his face, and more than the wolf she found herself staring at a snake, "If you feel strongly about the balance of this crime, attack us." More men around him split into smiles, an army of reptilian predators standing before one frightened girl and her tiny robot. A single field mouse trapped in a menagerie of serpents, "And then you will feel nothing at all."

He motioned, and they began to leave. Those were her answers, and she couldn't live with only that. She took a half step forward, calling to his shoulder, "You didn't answer my question. _Why_. Why did you do this? What did this _prove_?" Her voice was tinged now with desperation, a flush of broken emotion spreading across her cheeks.

Vulpes didn't pause, nor look back. He continued to walk, calmly, confidently, stepping through the ashes of lives he had destroyed, of the city he had leveled. "That they are weak." He stated simply, and all at once it summated the interwoven genius and madness that rolled from the man as easily as smoke rolled from the fires he had set, "And we are strong."

Heavenly couldn't _breathe_.

The men were walking away and she could hear the faint groans of those dying above her. The monsters of the Legion were stepping through the blood stained ruins of a town that they had decimated, and they felt _nothing_ about what they had done. Her breathing came shallow and fast, her eyes trailing at the backs cloaked in crimson, at the men who had proven to be evil personified; born and bred and given blades to further their works. All the unspeakable anguish around her coiled tight against her throat and she felt she couldn't breathe, couldn't think, couldn't _see_ passed anything through the veil of rage, despair, and guilt. All she could hear in her mind were Vulpes' last, echoing words, the calm and even spread of his tone, the confident stride he carried.

He would go to sleep that night and perhaps never think again of the lives he had ended.

She felt something delicate inside herself _snap_.

Heavenly's fingers curled around the strap of her grenade launcher. Her movements were certain, mechanical, unhesitating. She pulled the strap from her back and brought the gun into both hands, resting the butt of it against her shoulder. Her shallow breathing continued as she brought the sight up, looking through the rectangular cross hair at the backs of the retreating men. The men who hadn't even glanced back at her, so pleased in the work they had wrought they felt no need to check at just how intimidated they had left her. Her finger brushed the cool metal of the trigger and she paused - as if her body was asking her if she was certain this was what she wanted to do.

It was.

_Thump._

The hollow pop of the grenade preceded a kick up cloud of dust and dirt, a heavy spatter of blood striking sand and the thud of bodies thrown to the ground. The grenade had landed in the middle of the men as they fell in line behind Vulpes. And now they fell in _pieces_ behind him. Vulpes flinched and turned, casting one short glance to the men that had fallen, to the blood upon the ground, and then brought his gaze back to the smoking barrel of the gun that looked too large for her shoulder.

There was a moment of silence and clarity that hung between them, just as the smoke was beginning to clear. A moment of incredulity on both sides of the divide. Vulpes stared at her from behind those impenetrable lenses and she stared back at him through her clear ones. For those sparse few seconds when no one moved, when even the injured hadn't yet found time to scream out, Heavenly's mind cleared. She realized with a clear certainty that she was going to _die_, that what she had just done was going to cause the remaining men to _kill_ her. There was surprisingly little fear entangled with that fact; it came as simple logic. She was, quite simply, going to die. Vulpes was going to kill her.

But he was going to at least be _winded_.

Heavenly turned and ran, her footfalls pounding against concrete audibly as answering patters began just behind her. Her fingers fumbled with another thick round, struggling clumsily to feed it into the empty end of her gun. The screams of the men she had injured echoed now through the same town that had drank up similar screams just days before, accompanied by the dry flutter of dark wings as scavengers took flight from her path. She ran like she had never run before, underneath the listless stares of the dying, passed the hanging progression of death and amid the swirling ashes of the dead. She could hear the men behind her follow her progress, those few who hadn't been blown apart fall in line with her frenzied run. And she heard a strange, chinking sound, like an engine cranking to life, like a _chainsaw_ revving, but she didn't dare to glance back to the mystery. She ran for the split where the street she was on intersecting with the one she had come from, the one she had left Boone on.

ED's song piped to life. A laser cut the air behind her.

The chainsaw drew closer.

_Pop-clink_.

Relief swelled inside of her at the sound of the rifle, rising from her shaking legs into the terrified knot in the pit of her stomach. Boone stared down his scope not ten feet from her, aimed at the men who chased her. His face was drawn in an emotion she hadn't seen before - that was to say, _an emotion_, period - and as she came closer she heard him call out, "_That_ was your plan?" His rifle spat fire and she heard a body collapse behind her - a body that had been entirely too close. She came to the end of the street and turned, finally pressing the grenade round home and popping the gun shut. She didn't raise the gun; she hadn't the time. Someone had thrown open the doors to the Town Hall, and _wolves_ were running from the darkness within. Heavenly fired from her hip, popped a round off at her pursuers. They, however, had begun to fall back as they saw the gun rearmed, granting she and the sniper ground but effectively wasting the round.

They both began to back up, Boone shooting and Heavenly fumbling in her satchel for something helpful and lethal; another grenade round. Or a stick of dynamite. Or another Boone. Her eyes fell from her assailants as she searched for it, rustling past bullet casings and stimpacks. Not looking at the ground, not watching her attackers, she frantically sought the grenade, her fingers trembling and sweating so profusely she could barely move the contents of the bag. As she found it she heard Boone grunt, and she _dropped_ the round she had searched for so desperately, her pulse pounding as she turned to spot the source of his dismay.

One of the wolves had latched onto his arm, snarling as it dragged away his grip on his gun, as it ripped bloody rents along his flesh. Heavenly's eyes widened and her trembling hand fell to the nine-millimeter at her hip, fingers just barely slipping around the grip before the ground that she hadn't been watching became uneven. She lost her standing, heel slipping over a bit of upraised concrete and sending her spilling to the ground. She pulled her gun free as her backside impacted the broken street, twisting her body with the intent of popping off shots in Boone's direction - which, some cynical part of her mind noted, was an entirely _bad_ idea with her aiming skills. Despite her better judgment, she managed to pull the gun off, finger depressing faintly against the trigger and steeling her arm in preparation for the recoil, but never seeing if she would have actually been able to hit the dog and miss the sniper.

Something heavy was suddenly upon her, a loud, grinding _horror_ screaming too close to her ears. The weight impacting her shoulder, throwing her gun off target and popping off a single shot uselessly into the air as she fell further back. There was a pressure on her throat that she only realized a few moments after it had appeared to be a hand, that someone was crushing into her windpipe and pressing her aching back to the ground. Something covered her and the smell of sweat and ash clung to him, the sheen of his black lenses glinting a dull orange of reflected fires. Vulpes fell to his knees atop her, his one hand holding her throat and pressing her into the ground as easily as one might hold down a child. His other hand reared back and the _sound_ suddenly came together with an _image_ and the combination was such a horrific thing that she wished she could no longer associate the two.

It was a blade, like a butcher's knife but thicker, dull gray metal and a roaring chain along the edge of it. Close as it was, she could see patches of dull brown that could have once been blood, see the knicks along the flat of it where bone had scratched it's surface. The sound alone that it emitted was enough to cause her to begin screaming - as she realized a disturbing second later, she _was - _all clinking motors and shrieking blades. It was a chainsaw that he could carry as a knife, in a single hand, and it's roar was right atop her and it was _pressing down into her._

She struggled feebly beneath him, her arms pressing back against his shoulders and her mouth forming unbidden pleas for mercy. His strength bested hers easily, pressing her back and holding the chainsaw-knife to her, bearing down with a malice to his actions that only spurred her panic. It seemed he was aiming for her neck but her desperate flopping had set if off course and she felt it clink and grind against the armor at her collar bone. It emitted an even more horrible sound as it jumped and struggled to cut through the layers of protection the Legion armor gave her, muffling it's chain against the material it rattled against. He pressed the blade forward and back, tearing through layers of protection with each pull, his face remaining calm and slightly drawn, looming above her with the dark lenses that blocked his eyes.

He was _sawing_ into the armor, breaking through towards the fragile body underneath. Her body jumped and seized against the pavement as he worked deeper through the protection, her chest rattling violently and sporadically with his progress. She could feel the vibrations spreading all throughout her torso as he got closer, feel the press of the ripper through the layers he broke through. Her mind had lost all semblance of rational thought and reason, and she could barely hear her broken scream above the peal of the saw. She had fallen into instinct, into desperate, frenzied strikes against his chest and arms that were all too weak to do her any good. Hope and fear were wayward and tentative concepts to her unthinking mind; she was filled only with the animal need to survive.

She felt the first bright blossom of pain erupt through her shoulder and her collar bone, she could see the first faint hints of a smile break the monotony of his face. Then tears rose renewed to her eyes and she could see nothing at all.

And then the pressure was gone. Vulpes twitched once, his form jerking back in a jolt that pulled the knife from the rent it had dug into her armor. She hadn't heard the pop of the rifle, nor the splatter of viscera on the ground besides her through the ringing in her ears, through the frenzied pounding of blood that pulsed in time with the frantic pattering of her heart. Heavenly lay on her back and stared at the sky, stared at the shifting wafts of smoke that created a thin layer of spotted black against blue. Vulpes collapsed atop her, the knife in his hand clattering to the side in nerveless fingers, the engine slowly sputtering and then dying without a hand to hold it. She could smell blood and smoke, ashes and decay on him, on the wolf fur he wore on his head. She couldn't breathe underneath the weight, couldn't breathe in the wake of the trauma of all that had happened. She lay in despondency, in disbelief. Pain pounded through her back and the after effects of terror coursed numbly through her mind.

"Monroe!" His voice couldn't pull her from whatever had shuddered and collapsed within her mind. The pressure on her chest was relieved as Boone dragged the body off of her, falling to a knee and staring down at her with widened eyes. She couldn't place the expression that he wore, whether it be worry or fear or calm acceptance. He reached out slowly and his fingertips fell on her neck, pressing in towards the pulse that still fluttered resiliently, despite circumstances.

Panic surged anew to her mind. Her hand darted up, snapping on the arm that placed the hand, returning to herself with a frantic insistence. Boone pulled his hand back as she did, letting out a breath that she thought may have been relief - but even when she wasn't a traumatized wreck she wouldn't have been able to measure Boone's elusive emotions. Heavenly pushed herself slowly to a sitting position, breathing in for what seemed like the first time in hours. She could see he was about to attempt to speak past the ringing in her ears, but she put up a hand to stall him. She wasn't ready for words. She wasn't ready to be _touched_, quite possibly ever again.

Her fingers fell unwilling to the hardened layers at her collar bone, to the broken folds of armor whose dents she could feel brushing against the skin below. She had limped away from the battle with naught but a scratch underneath the broken armor of a dead man, but somehow, she didn't feel lucky this time. Her back had lit afire with the pain of reopened wounds, her mind straining to parse everything that had just happened.

Struggled to understand how she was still _breathing_ and Vulpes was not.

Her hearing was slowly returning to her. The low crackle of fires and the whispering feathers of the scavengers that circled above them. She heard a buzz and a whir and looked back to see ED was floating merrily towards her and away from what looked like the fallen and flaming body of a hound. Heavenly frowned and remained sitting still on the ground, Boone kneeling close and remaining as silent as the eyebot rejoined them. The wind brushed across the trio, bringing with it the coppery scent of fresh blood and the lingering, acrid odor of seared flesh. Nipton once again fell to silence, the breeze carrying the last few sounds the dead town would ever make; the whispered moans of the dying, the crackle of fading coals, the errant cries of the crows above.

And something else. Heavenly's head rose, blinking dry eyes once as she heard it. She looked back to Boone, seeing his attention diverted from her, sent back towards the town hall. She pushed herself to a slow stand and came to her feet, following his gaze to the open doors and a huddled form strewn out on the stairs. A cold fire rose up in her throat and she began forward, ignoring the rumbles of pain that flew up her back with each step.

She returned down the hall of the dead, coming closer to the town hall and realizing both the sound and sight they had perceived. One of the Legion strained to pull himself forward with his arms, a trail of blood revealing it to have been _he_ who dragged a broken body up the steps and released the dogs from the building behind them. Both legs were a shattered mess of bone and pumping blood - obviously the work of her grenade launcher - and he tugged himself down the stairs and towards one of his fallen comrades, and towards the machete that lay on the ground beside the body. He caught sight of her as she neared and he snarled; but even one trained such as he couldn't hide the fear in his eyes, nor the quaking of his hands at her approach.

"You profligate _whore_." He croaked, his throat cracked from screaming, his face gone pale from blood loss, "Your body is now forfeit. You will be broken and strung up. The Legion will not forget this transgression. The Legion will not forget what was happened here."

Heavenly stared at him, and though she couldn't see it, all emotion had been wiped from her features. She watched him with a calm apathy, nothing stirring in her heart to his suffering. She felt a heated lump rise and fall in her throat, a sickness she fought back down, a sickness to what she saw in the boy and what she was slowly realizing existed inside herself. Her hand fell back to the Repeater strapped lengthwise to her hips, unlatching the strap that held it there and pulling the gun free. The boy saw it, his lip quivering upwards in a sneer filled with hatred and anger and the terror of coming death, but Heavenly offered no emotion in return.

She stared at him now with calm detachment. She stared at him like Checkered Coat had once stared at her, shuddering in darkness and so afraid to die. Calm to his terror, lucidity to his panic.

"You know why this happened?" She said, and her words, the cold apathy to them, made her sound nothing like herself. She leveled the Repeater and the boy continued to stare at her, his blue eyes already half gone in shock and pain, "Because you're weak. And I'm strong." If the tone she used had been flowing from a holotape, she wouldn't have recognized it as her own. If her actions were replayed before her, she couldn't have seen herself performing them.

She aimed for his head.

For once, she did not miss.

...

She wasn't _well_.

That much he could tell.

She hadn't spoken much since the end of the fight, as they retreated into the relative shelter of one of Nipton's numerous empty homes. She walked in blankly, her eyes ahead and a slight limp to her step from some wound she hadn't mentioned and he couldn't see. The very _town_ seemed to wound her in some strange, nonphysical way, like merely being there had been slowly sapping her strength since they arrived. Not that he necessarily thought ill of her for that fact; he would have been more concerned had she _not_ given the reaction she had upon the gruesome state they had found the town in. Somehow surviving what they had didn't seem to encourage her usual optimism to return, however. Even after avenging the people of Nipton she only seemed more tired and sore than before.

Though that vengeance seemed to come at some unspoken price to her. He hadn't known her long, he didn't really _need_ to have known her long to know that the words she spoke and the way she had acted had been out of character for her. In retrospect, he wished he would have just sniped the wounded Legion boy while she was still regaining her bearings; killing him herself seemed to have taken another little piece of her and scattered it, lost to the wind.

This regret came quick on the heels of other, more present ones. He felt a faint resonance of guilt inside of himself for leading her without explicitly telling her what they would find. He supposed he didn't want to discourage her path; he _wanted_ things to end as they had today. He _wanted_ to kill every bastard that had defaced the town of Nipton. Things had ended in his favor, and now he could only feel the first edges of guilt for walking her into it unknowing. Because of course he had seen all this before, and of course she hadn't. Were he a better man, he would have warned her. Would have stopped her.

He hadn't, and he could almost see the look Carla would be giving him. Disappointment and mingled shame.

But there was _something_ there, stirring unrecognized in his chest. Some emotion of guilt and regret that broke the monotony of the _nothing_ that reigned prevalent inside him. Seeing Monroe in the state she was in, seeing her disillusionment and grief, it made something stir and perk it's ears inside him. It was such a strange, forgotten thing that it made him wonder how much further it's ripples could spread. It made him wonder if perhaps it was with this _girl_ that he would find the path within him that would lead back to the man that Carla had loved. That had been _worthy_ of love, of redemption. The man who could move beyond the blood on his hands, instead of one who was powerless to do any more than sit and wait for the desert to take him.

But that remained simple, empty hope. Inside, he knew the best he could find at Monroe's side would be the death that hunted her relentlessly. And maybe when it found her, it would take him too - and a debt paid was the most he could expect out of the Mojave.

Monroe grunted faintly, catching his attention. She was struggling to pull the legion armor over her head, to relieve herself of the weight on that wound she hadn't yet revealed to him. Boone dropped his duffle to the ground, setting his rifle to the side of it. He moved forward slowly, not announcing his presence as he came behind her and gently began pulling the armor up. Monroe froze for a moment, her muscles stiffening as if she were considering which would win out within her; modesty or logic. Resigned, her hands rose up over her head, straightening and allowing him to slide the armor up and off of her.

Boone hissed in a reflexive breath.

The plain white shirt she wore underneath the armor was soaked in _blood_ over her back, immediately explaining her limping. Monroe stumbled another step forward and he reached out instinctively to steady her.

"Jesus Christ," He muttered, holding her shoulders gently to ensure she didn't tumble downwards, "What _happened_? Were you hit?"

"Fucking ... Blinky." Monroe mumbled, seeming only half aware of the question, and giving an outright nonsensical response. He didn't even _understand_ the answer, but considering that there hadn't been any breaks in the back of her armor, he could only assume this was an old wound. Reopened and soaking through it's bandages.

"Lay down." He said evenly, turning back and wondering if he had even _brought_ anything to tend it with. He wasn't a Doctor, nothing on her level, but he knew basic first aid from his days in the NCR. Before he had made it two steps to his bag, however, her soft voice drifted in from behind him.

"My satchel. Bandages. H-Healing powder. Stims." Her voice sounded weak and further away than she was. He heard ancient springs creak as she settled down on the bed behind him, exhaling a soft sigh as she settled in off her feet.

He turned back to the door, sighting her bag where she had dropped it upon entering. He moved to it swiftly, finding the items she had described and moving back into the room where she lay. She had removed her shirt and laid flat on her stomach, the blood soaking her back filling the room with a coppery smell he knew too well. He moved beside her and set to work immediately, fully aware that her eyes were shut and there were small furrows of pain etched in her brow.

"Monroe." He said quickly, loud enough to pull her attention, "Try to stay awake."

She mumbled something, then hissed in a breath as he began removing the bandages from her back. The adhesive edges pulled up easily from the blood and sweat that had seeped through and weakened the bond to her skin. Boone's eyes widened incrementally at what he saw there, his fingers raising to remove his sunglasses and set them aside.

Three long rents were slowly healing across her back, looking too long and too ragged to be upon something so petite. The longest in the middle, striking diagonally across her spine, seemed to be the one that had reopened, and the one that hadn't yet healed fully. The rents above and below the largest were scabbed over and oozing small amounts of blood from scattered cracks, but the importance was minor next to the monster across her backbone. Whatever had hit her had been _big_ and he wasn't certain how she could have even survived such a thing. The one in the middle in particular looked like it had been much deeper and much longer than the state it had healed to - he wondered how it hadn't broken her back and paralyzed her on the spot. Between that and the bullet wound on her head, he was beginning to wonder just how many _lives_ Doctor Monroe had lost, out in the waste.

He had sat still for too long; he needed to get to work. His hands moved to the spot on the bed where he had set the healing powder, untying it's string and pulling the top of the bag open. He shook the powder loose, letting it fall in a flaky layer of brown across her back. It slipped and mingled with the blood and Monroe dragged in a haggard breath. Her eyes squeezed shut and he realized that laying there and _thinking_ about the pain was about the worst possible thing she could do. He was a private person, and he respected others privacy as well, but there was really only one thing he could think about to ask her on.

"So, what happened?" He stated evenly, his calm voice breaking through the silence that hung heavy in the house.

"Blinky." She stated again, simply and nonsensically, but her voice now carried the edge of barely contained pain in it. As much as he was curious about the explanation behind _that_ word, he felt a greater interest in what had happened before that. In the mark she wore as a badge of honor, a medal of survival, glaring out from her forehead and daring the world to come at her again.

"No," He responded quietly, shaking more of the powder to fall in a hazy storm across her back, "I mean your head. The scar."

Monroe paused, seemed to consider. He heard, more than saw, something deflate and collapse within her; something mended since the battle that snapped as she relived an unspoken memory in her mind. She let out another sigh, a soft, quick exhalation of breath that could have been because of either depression or pain. Boone remained silent, as much he always did. He had put the question out there, and if she didn't want to answer, he wasn't going to press it. It would be overtly hypocritical of him to insist that _anyone_ give up their secrets.

A few moments passed and he wasn't certain that she _was_ going to tell him. He continued his work in silence, somber curiosity the only force that had posed the question, and one that was easily contained were it to be denied. She stirred faintly, her small back readjusting against the bed as she propped herself up on her elbows and began to speak again.

From her tone, it sounded like he wasn't getting an _answer_. He was getting a _story._

"I'm a veterinarian." She muttered, and the word itself sounded defeated and lost, "But I was supposed to deliver this _chip._"

...

He sat with his back to her, a half finished cigarette between his fingers. Silence spread again through the room, but it was a gentler, more comfortable one. The truth now lay bare between them and she held no more secrets inside her to keep from him. And she hadn't pressed to know his simply because he knew hers, and that was a trade he could remain content with, even if it bordered unfair to her. He hadn't spoke much as she told him all the details of what happened, silently working at the wound on her back and doing his best to ease her pain with what little medical knowledge he had retained from his military days. Once she had started talking she seemed to be at least a bit better; it seemed hearing her own voice was the only thing that kept Monroe calm.

She had found a shirt after his clumsy administrations had at least stalled the bleeding. It was a gray, off-color stained thing that presumably belonged to whomever had been living in the home before the Legion had come. It was a bit big on her and lacked sleeves but it wasn't covered in _blood_ so she had told him she considered it a step up. She had laid on her stomach back on the bed, her eyes staring off at a wall and facing the opposite direction of the corner he sat on.

He hadn't spoken. But he hoped she was used to that. His eyes fell on the bandages she had wrapped around his arm after he had finished with hers - the dog bite hadn't been bad, but she had insisted. Probably felt like she owed him, after he had helped her. He flicked his fingers and scattered ashes to the floor; it wasn't like the owners were coming back to claim it, after all. As usual, it was her voice that broke the silence between them, soft and tired but seemingly recovering, if only minutely.

"Thank you. For my back." He didn't turn or respond, just nodded and took another drag of the cigarette. Silence fell again for only a moment when, much to the surprise of both of them, it was he who spoke next.

"So we're going to Vegas?"

He heard her stir. Probably pushing herself up to look at him in shock. He didn't look back, but could tell she was struggling for words. "I ..." She began, and trailed off, then started again, speaking slowly and deliberately, "Yeah. Slowly but surely."

He nodded, and didn't offer her a reason as to why he was still willing to help her. He thought it's origins lay somewhere in guilt, with boredom finishing a close second. There was more Legion on her path, certainly, but if that was all he cared about he could just start making rounds outside of Cottonwood and pick off slaving bands. He was secretly glad she didn't _ask_ why he intended on going with her, because he couldn't fully place the answer himself. He wanted to believe that it involved doing the right thing, protecting something half broken that couldn't hold it's falling pieces together. He wanted to believe it was because he could clearly see that path back to the man he was, and it was a road fraught with bloodshed that led him ever closer to the brightness on the horizon. And deep down he could only hope that following her would lead him to the release he had sought since he had put a bullet into the face that held the eyes that had kept his demons at bay.

What better way to find death than to follow someone who had already found it twice?

He heard the eyebot whir softly, somewhere off in a corner where it floated. Then he heard her stir, pushing herself up with a grunt and a creak of ancient springs. He turned back, tossing the cigarette to the ground and grinding a foot over it to kill the ember at it's end. He didn't speak, just watched her as she moved around the bed, taking soft, careful steps towards her satchel.

"You should rest." He said simply, impassively, his tone refusing to insist.

She let out a little breath, shaking her head in denial before she found the words to explain. When she looked over, it seemed as though she were fighting tears - or maybe she had looked that way all day, and it was only now he could place the exaggerated shine in her eyes. Her voice came out weak and pained, fumbling over syllables before selecting those she required, "I ... Can't. Not yet. Those people outside. They're still ..." Her eyes dropped away as she struggled for words, "Even if we pull them down, the amount of time they've been up there, the _degradation_ their bodies have suffered, to say nothing of their _minds_ ..." She trailed off, and turned, intent on completing the task she had given herself.

He understood. He had received the same explanation before, from less caring men. Snipers were often called on for mercy shots, and First Recon had been no exception. Boone had shot done more than a few of his former comrades from makeshift crosses, where the Legion would string them up, making sure everyone could see them. He knew what she was getting at, and knew what she planned to do.

It wasn't compassion or care that he acted out of, not necessarily. It was more an odd form of pragmatism; he knew she wouldn't be able to handle doing what she intended to do. If they were going to head towards Vegas together, her mind needed to be on the task. She needed to focus on finding this guy that had shot her, finding the package he had taken. She couldn't be worrying, as he knew from experience she _would_, about whether or not the innocent people she had put down could have been saved. Seeing their faces would only push her further towards and edge she wouldn't climb back up from. He knew because it had been the same for him, in what seemed a lifetime ago, when he his rifle had first fired forth mercy instead of death.

"I'll take care of it." He stated, moving towards where he had dropped his rifle without looking back to her. There was a small glimmer of hope fluttering in his chest that sparing her the consequences of the well intended act found it's origin in something beyond cold practicality. He could only hope that he was doing this because it was right, and a kindness, and something more than what he suspected it to be.

He didn't look back as he moved past her. He could weather the storm of dead stares and return much the same; she could not. He wasn't sure if she even _was_ the same, now, after the coldness he had heard in her tone and the brutal efficiency of her actions. And he wasn't sure if her changing was an entirely _bad_ thing.

Though he also wasn't entirely sure if he _cared_.

...

Heavenly watched him go, unwilling to fight him on the matter. It wasn't something she had really wanted to do, just something she knew had to be done. Again his kindness had flared unexpected in her face, but she was too tired and too sore to wonder on the motivations behind it. The fact that he was going with them to _Vegas_ was enough to send her mind tumbling over his reasons and his meaning. It wasn't, though, that she was in any position to question nor complain about his willingness. What was she going to do - say _no_ to the sniper that had been the sole reason she hadn't wound up _decapitated_ not an hour before? Boone was _certainly_ welcome to follow her where ever he wanted to, so long as he kept that rifle and that pleasant sense of _humor_ of his.

ED beeped faintly from the corner, causing her to smile faintly and half turn her head towards him. "Don't worry." She spoke quietly, words a whisper in a house that belonged to the dead, "You still come first in my heart."

He seemed relieved at that; or maybe the painkillers were just kicking in. She moved away from the door and back to the bed, lowering herself gingerly onto it. Heavenly turned and lowered herself onto her stomach, bringing up her Pip-Boy and pressing buttons until the map came up. Vegas loomed closer and her broken body still had enough life within it to carry her through. The bright city lay northward, and her path was already planned out, her resolve reaffirmed somewhere int he chaos and the death that surrounded her. They'd have to go back up through Novac, passed Boulder City, and through the Vegas slums that surrounded the city proper. There was probably an easier route, faster if they went straight north from Nipton - but she had _learned_ her lesson about deviating from the roads.

Even if she had gained a sniper.

What a strange thing, she considered quietly, to no longer be _alone_.


End file.
